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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917782">Tender is the Ghost</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hark_bananas/pseuds/Hark_bananas'>Hark_bananas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tender is the Ghost [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little bit of angst, ALL THE FLUFF, Birthdays, Bucky's new identity, But just a little, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Christmas Presents, Coming Out, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Food, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Gardens &amp; Gardening, Getting to know you, Hugging, M/M, Memory Loss, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Sharing Clothes, Steve Rogers Goes to Therapy, Thanksgiving, Weddings, a little bit of hurt/comfort, almost none, brief mention of past Steve/Peggy, getting injured in the line of duty, so much hugging, weapons-grade fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:41:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>151,540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917782</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hark_bananas/pseuds/Hark_bananas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This thought is uncontrollably followed by another one: <em>I’m not alone anymore</em>. He looks over his shoulder, through the kitchen door, to where Bucky is sitting at his usual place at the head of the dining table, and he feels an unconstrainable smile breaking out across his face, the barest hint of threatening tears along its bright edge.</p>
<p> <em>I’m not alone anymore.</em></p>
<p>Bucky is still looking past Steve’s left ear, but slowly, gingerly, one side of his mouth quirks up. Steve feels giddy, he wants to shout, or faint, or something to relieve the carbonated pressure that is bubbling up inside of him. Instead, he laughs, short and cheerful, and opens the oven door.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers &amp; Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers &amp; Sam Wilson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tender is the Ghost [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595953</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>366</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>455</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. January</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi! If you have not read <i>A Little Key, a Heavy Door</i> (part one of this series), I strongly suggest you do, as this story picks up immediately where that story ends, and there are things from <i>A Little Key</i> referenced in this story that are not explained. However, it's not imperative; you won't be lost, and most of the references are just throwaway bits of information in the context.</p>
<p>Huge thank-you to my beta (she knows who she is) for being an amazing beta and an even better friend.</p>
<p>Note: Tags will be updated as chapters get posted, but the rating (E) and the archive warnings (none) will stay the same.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Well, here we are,” Steve says, sliding out of the car. He holds the door open, thinking that maybe Bucky is going to slide out after him, but when he turns around, Bucky has already gotten out of the street-side door and is standing on the sidewalk with his duffle bag, looking lost, nervous, and confused. It’s exactly what Steve needs to pull himself out of his own head, to clear the space between his ears that’s been vibrating like a plucked harp string all morning.</p>
<p>The ride in the car had been awkward and strange, Bucky pulled into himself on the left-hand seat, looking blankly out of the window as Manhattan rolled past. Steve hadn’t tried to make small talk because he hadn’t known what to say, hadn’t been able to think of anything, his mind a white void full of a ringing echo like the sound his ears make after he takes a blow to the head.   </p>
<p>But seeing Bucky looking, for all his height and coiled strength, so small, suddenly lights something in Steve like a sodium flare, a fizzing, sparking purpose glowing in his chest.</p>
<p>He shuts the door and leans through the front passenger window, slipping a folded bill to the driver before sending him on his way. Then he gives Bucky the warmest smile he can muster and opens the front gate, ushering him up the stairs and into the house with a confidence that surprises himself.</p>
<p>He toes his shoes off in the front hall and hangs his jacket up, like always, but Bucky doesn’t follow his lead. <em>Okay</em>. He takes two steps down the hallway and says, starting at his right, “That’s the living room, then the dining room, and through that door’s the kitchen,” motioning to each one in turn, spinning on his ball of his foot until he’s back around facing Bucky again. Bucky has his head tipped toward the floor, but his eyes are flicking around, into the living room, through the kitchen door, at Steve’s feet, at his own feet in their scuffed, black boots like two broken-off lumps of asphalt.</p>
<p>“Do you, do you want something to eat?” Steve says, faltering a little. “Or drink? I could make us lunch. I’ve got stuff for sandwiches, I bought turkey yesterday, or I could make pasta or something more like oatmeal if you’d rather have that.”</p>
<p>Bucky looks over Steve’s shoulder to the kitchen, bright in the light of the sunny winter midday, and clears his throat. Steve thinks he’s going to say something, but after a moment he just shakes his head once, minutely.</p>
<p>“Okay, okay. Um.” Steve doesn’t know what to do. Seven or eight times on the drive home he’d pictured himself presenting Bucky with a stack of half a dozen turkey sandwiches on a silver platter, but hadn’t actually imagined that he might not want to eat. “Uh, we can eat something later. How about I show you around upstairs, you can put your bag in your room.”</p>
<p>He hops up the stairs, the pent-up energy he feels thrumming through his bones compelling him to climb the staircase like some overgrown five-year-old. Bucky follows him silently, placing each of his big boots carefully like he’s climbing a house of cards.</p>
<p>At the top, Steve waves a hand toward the open door of his own bedroom. “That’s mine, and I have an ensuite bathroom to the left of the door. The next door goes to my studio, which is just a tiny little room, barely space for an easel, I’ll show you later. Right straight ahead is your bathroom, and I left you a towel and a razor and a toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter, and there’s shampoo and soap in the shower. Don’t know if you need anything else…” he trails off, looking at Bucky, but Bucky’s not looking at him. He’s staring through the open door of the guest bedroom, <em>his</em> bedroom, with an inscrutable look on his face. But Steve thinks he recognizes something a little like craving, and a little like relief.</p>
<p>They stand there for another moment, Steve looking at Bucky’s strange-familiar face and Bucky looking through the open bedroom door before Steve heaves an internal sigh and says, “And that’s your room.”</p>
<p>It must seem like permission enough because Bucky steps forward and walks across the bare wood floor to the window overlooking the backyard. There isn’t much to see out there, a long rectangle with patchy grass the color of well-worn fatigues with the greenhouse in one corner, surrounded by a tall wooden fence with the nondescript backsides of the other houses beyond, but Steve watches him relax in real-time, his shoulders dropping by fractions of an inch, his spine through his grey sweatshirt making a softer curve. He still doesn’t look at Steve.</p>
<p>“Um,” Steve says, totally at a loss now that his earlier confidence is gone, though the butt end of the fizzing sodium flare remains. “There’s a closet for whatever you brought with you, and a dresser. And there’s a duvet on the bed and the quilt, of course, but if you need any other blankets, just let me know, they’re in my closet, I’ll get them for you, but you probably won’t need them, ‘cause you can just turn the radiators up if you want, they’re electric, they were replaced right before I bought the house, and each one has a little control pad on it and they’re pretty self-explanatory…”</p>
<p>Finally, he manages to cut himself off without actually having to punch himself in the teeth. <em>Stupid, stupid,</em> he thinks, <em>Just let him alone for a while, he needs to adjust without you breathing down his neck.</em></p>
<p>“Uh, I’m gonna go downstairs now, have a sandwich. When you get hungry, just come down and I’ll make you one, too, okay?”</p>
<p>Bucky turns his head, the sharp slope of his jaw softened by his stubble and highlighted by the sunlight shining through the window. He looks toward Steve rather than at him, but he nods, and Steve infers a sort of gratitude from it. He makes an about-face and walks out of the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind him.</p><hr/>
<p>Steve makes himself two turkey sandwiches and eats half a dozen bananas standing at the kitchen counter like a po-faced gorilla, then casts about for something to occupy himself while he’s waiting for Bucky to come down. He washes the dishes, sweeps the floor, mops the kitchen, and goes upstairs to strip his bed and wash all his bedding, even though he’d just done it two days before. Then, a little more desperately, he takes a rag and dusts everything with a horizontal surface for the first time since he’d moved in. He rearranges his books, grouping them by author and genre instead of just shoving them in haphazardly wherever he finds a space. Finally, the sun is going down and he’s standing in front of the living room windows that look out over his tiny, bare front yard and the motorcycle under its black plastic cover, wondering if he could wash the windows with dish soap or if he needs some kind of fancy window soap, when his phone rings from the dining room table, breaking the silence and jolting him out of his reverie like a cattle prod.</p>
<p>“Hello?”</p>
<p>“Hey, hey, Steve! What’s up?”</p>
<p>Steve holds the phone between his shoulder and his ear while he roots around under the sink for a clean rag. “Oh hey, Sam, nothing much. Hey, can I just use any soap to clean the windows or does it have to be some special kind?”</p>
<p>There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.</p>
<p>“Weren’t you supposed to bring Barnes home today?”</p>
<p>“Uh, yeah, I did, this morning.”</p>
<p>“Then why the hell are you washing the windows?”</p>
<p>“Because,” he whispers into the phone, more of a hiss, really, acutely aware that Bucky’s got enhanced hearing, same as him, “he shut himself up in his room and hasn’t come down! I don’t know what to do, Sam, he hasn’t eaten anything all day, but I don’t want to disturb him, I know he’s going to want to be by himself a lot, but he’s got to eat, but I don’t want to make him uncomfortable, and…”</p>
<p>“Steve.”</p>
<p>“...and he’s not talking to me, which I expected, it’s not a problem, except that I don’t know what he needs and…”</p>
<p>“<em>STEVE</em>.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Shut up and listen to the counselor.”</p>
<p>“Sam, you’re not my… you don’t have to…”</p>
<p>“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”</p>
<p>Steve makes a frustrated noise and Sam laughs softly down the line at him.</p>
<p>“That’s better. Look, this isn’t what I called you for, and I don’t want to turn into your Barnes whisperer. You gotta call his therapist from SHIELD if you think something’s really wrong, okay?”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Steve mutters, sitting cross-legged on the cold kitchen floor and surrounded by all of the cleaning supplies that’d he’d pulled out from under the sink.</p>
<p>“But I guess you’re gonna need a little hand-holding, and I could do that for you. But just a little.”</p>
<p>Steve opens his mouth to protest, but Sam just says, “Uh uh, I can hear you thinking from all the way down in DC. Shut up and let me talk. So first, Steve, you gotta give him some time. Don’t you remember what it was like when you first came out of the ice?”</p>
<p>Oh, Steve remembers. How could he forget? Confused and scared, wanting to escape, not just from SHIELD, but later from the noise and the lights and the incongruity that grated on his nerves like a broken tooth, but having no idea where to go. “Yeah,” he says softly.</p>
<p>“Well, it’s different for Barnes, of course, but think about how much he’s having to adjust to right now. If he’s shut himself up in his bedroom, it probably means he needs to be alone. He’ll come out when he’s ready.”</p>
<p>“But Sam,” Steve says plaintively, “he hasn’t eaten anything! He’s got the same metabolism as me, I think, and you know how I get when I don’t eat.”</p>
<p>“Damn right I do,” Sam says, and it’s so warm and fond and is undeniably the product of months together on the road and all that Sam sacrificed to help Steve track Bucky down. Steve feels a little knot of tears form in his throat, but before he can say anything, Sam continues, “Look, you gotta let him get better on his own time. And you can’t force him to come downstairs so you can stuff him with lasagna or whatever. But I don’t think it would hurt to go upstairs and knock politely on his door and ask.”</p>
<p>“Okay, I’ll do that,” Steve says, relieved to have someone, finally, give him a little direction.</p>
<p>“And then if he still doesn’t come out, you gotta leave him alone. Maybe try again tomorrow morning. But just let him be.”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Sam,” Steve says, and cuts the call with a quick goodbye, too caught up in his own worries to ask Sam what he’d even called for in the first place.   </p>
<p>Steve walks upstairs, making sure to set his feet down firmly so that he makes enough noise and knocks softly on Bucky’s door, their old Morse code signal.</p>
<p>
  <em>Knock knock knock</em>
</p>
<p>“It’s me, Steve,” he says into the silence, and then smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. <em>You idiot, who else would it be?</em></p>
<p>He waits, but there’s nothing. Even his supersoldier hearing can’t pick up the sound of Bucky’s breathing or his heartbeat. Immediately, he jumps to the worst-case scenario, <em>what if he’s gone?</em> and starts to panic. He’d been downstairs talking to Sam, not paying attention, and he knows he wouldn’t have heard anything if Bucky had decided to jump out the window and disappear like the last curl of smoke from a blown-out candle.</p>
<p>“Bucky?” he says, his voice a little higher and tighter, slipping out of his control. “Are you there?” After a few tense seconds there’s a rustle and he hears a breath being let out slowly. Soft footsteps pad to the door and Bucky knocks from the other side.</p>
<p><em>Knock </em>pause <em>knock knock knock</em></p>
<p>Steve starts breathing again; he hadn’t even known that he’d stopped. “Is there… anything I can get you?”</p>
<p>A long minute passes in which he stands with his ear pressed to the door and listens to the slow breathing on the other side. “No.”</p>
<p>He wants to read everything into that <em>No</em>, wants to break it down into its constituent parts, pull out his microscope and figure out what Bucky is feeling. Is he angry? Scared? Tired? Why doesn’t he want to come out? Why doesn’t he want to eat? Is he waiting for Steve to order him to eat? That’s not going to happen, surely he knows that.</p>
<p>Doesn’t he?</p>
<p>Regardless, it feels so good to hear his voice. <em>No</em>, soft and low, halfway between a rumble and a whisper. Steve resists the urge to slide down the door and kick his legs out along the hallway and just talk and talk, like he did at SHIELD. Tell Bucky about… about what? He’s the biggest thing in Steve’s life right now, the monolith at the forefront of his mind, the only topic of conversation that Steve has today. <em>Hey Bucky, my best friend came home to live with me for the first time in seventy years, Hey Bucky, I want to take care of him but I don’t know how to do that if he won’t talk to me, Hey Bucky, I want to tell him that I’d do anything for him but I don’t know how to say it.</em></p>
<p>“Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do for you?” He hesitates. “Please?”</p>
<p>This time, there’s a much longer pause. Steve’s mind wanders, and he starts to think about turkey sandwiches again like a one-joke comic. Then, with a little dollop of mortification, the part of his mind that’s dangerously close to hysterics says <em>he hasn’t used the bathroom all day, is he peeing out the window?</em> and he whirls around on one foot, ready to march down the stairs and make an aspic out of his own head when he hears Bucky take a deep breath and say, “Okay,” and then, “thanks.”</p>
<p>Steve is flooded with relief, all of the monkeys and typewriters in his head disappearing in a flash of light. He thinks that he’s probably pushed his luck enough for today, so he says, gently, “Alright, I’ll be downstairs,” and turns away.</p><hr/>
<p>The next morning, he’s still seen no sign of Bucky, so he decides to try again. He walks upstairs with a plate of food and knocks softly on the door.</p>
<p>
  <em>Knock knock knock</em>
</p>
<p>“Bucky?”</p>
<p>There’s a long, empty silence, and he’s almost ready to turn around and walk back downstairs again when he hears some rustling, and then the squeak of the old brass doorknob. The door opens a crack, just enough for Bucky to peer out, but without letting Steve see past him. “Are… are you hungry?” he asks.</p>
<p> The answer is quick and his voice is flat. “No.”</p>
<p>Steve can see immediately that this isn’t true; the look on Bucky’s face gives him away. He had been hoping, faintly, that Bucky might come downstairs and join him when he heard him making noise in the kitchen, but he got the two omelets cooked and a whole pound of bacon fried with no signs of life from the spare bedroom.</p>
<p>Now, he’s standing in the doorway with a three-egg omelet and six strips of bacon on a plate and Bucky is staring at it intently, as if he’s a hovering hawk with nestlings to feed and the omelet is a daft little rabbit who’s just decided to pop out of the warren to see what the weather’s like.</p>
<p>“Okay,” says Steve. He’d woken up at half past five and laid in bed for two hours with his mind whirling, finally coming to the conclusion that he needed to change tack. A straight offer gets a flat-out refusal, but maybe a little temptation will speed things along. “No problem, but I made too much for myself”—here he pats his stomach as if it were anything less than perfectly flat—“so I’ll leave this covered up in the oven. You can come down and get it whenever you want.” He endeavors to sound as nonchalant as possible. “And if you don’t want anything to eat, that’s fine, I’ll have it for a snack, later.”</p>
<p>He goes back downstairs without waiting for Bucky to close the door first, warms the oven for a few minutes, and leaves the omelet and bacon under another plate inside. Then he sits down on the couch and picks up his laptop, lying haphazardly on the end of the chaise longue, adjusts the charging cable around his feet as he kicks them up, and slouches back into the deep cushions. He doesn’t have anywhere to be but here and nothing to do but wait, so he decides to answer some long-forgotten emails and maybe watch a movie, if he gets really tired of being productive.</p>
<p>An hour later, he’s answered zero emails, stared into space for a while, and half-watched one episode of Star Trek with the volume turned low and subtitles on when his stomach makes a noise like a Harley-Davidson with sugar in the gas tank and he decides that it’s time for a snack. His metabolism means that he either has to stuff himself like a jelly donut at every meal or eat something lighter but more manageable every two hours, but he had been too nervous about cooking for Bucky this morning to choke down more than one five-egg omelet and ten slices of bacon. It’s time for a little pick-me-up.</p>
<p>There’s been no sign of life from upstairs, he thinks sadly, so he’ll go eat the omelet himself and try again after lunch, maybe call Sam back and squeak even more pitifully down the phone at him. He walks into the kitchen and opens the oven, but the plate that he’d left for Bucky an hour ago is gone.</p>
<p>Steve does an honest-to-god doubletake. He’d been sitting in the living room for the last hour, and the living room opens onto both the hall, where the stairs are, and the dining room, which opens onto the kitchen. The couch sits in the middle of the living room facing the big front windows and is positioned so that he can see the bottom of the stairs out of the corner of his eye. His first nonsensical thought is that a robber had broken into the kitchen through the door that leads onto the back deck and, finding no silver, had made off with his omelet instead. A fleeting image passes in front of his mind’s eye, a crooked man in black and white stripes and a mask with a big burlap bag, tossing whole pieces of bacon into his maw and cackling.</p>
<p><em>I’m losing it</em>, he thinks, not for the first time. He has enhanced hearing and military training, for chrissake, how is it possible that he didn’t hear Bucky open his door, come downstairs, get the plate out of the oven, and go back upstairs again?</p>
<p>And the stairs are creaky, too. Just to be sure that Bucky isn’t hunkered down under the dining room table or something, he does a quick sweep of the ground floor and then heads upstairs. The second stair from the bottom and the last two at the top all squeak, confirming his suspicions. Steve is simultaneously impressed and annoyed. Why do the stairs give <em>him</em> away? Traitors.</p>
<p>For some reason he can’t articulate, he doesn’t want Bucky to think that he came upstairs just to see if he’d eaten his breakfast, but he has to pee anyway, so he goes through his bedroom and into the master bathroom and takes a leak. He washes his hands and then walks out into the hallway, then stops in front of Bucky’s door and raps on it softly with his knuckles. “Hey, I was gonna wash up the breakfast dishes, so if you’re finished with the plates, I can go ahead and take them downstairs.”</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t say anything, but there are soft sounds of movement inside the room. “Can I come in?” Steve asks. There’s a soft grunt in reply, which he takes as an affirmative.</p>
<p>Bucky is sitting cross-legged on the bed, still in the baggy SHIELD-issue sweats that he’d arrived in. <em>Does he have any other clothes? </em>Steve thinks, but that thought vanishes as soon as it appears. There is a vast and frankly alarming array of weaponry spread out on a dark cloth on top of the creamy yellow duvet. Steve counts a dozen small knives of various sizes and levels of scariness and a large, serrated hunting knife that looks like the bastard son of a machete and a chainsaw. <em>No guns</em>, Steve notes with relief. The two plates are stacked neatly on the edge of the dresser with a fork that Bucky must have taken from the silverware drawer, <em>which sticks and then jangles loudly when you finally yank it open</em>, <em>goddammit</em>.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know what to say; he stands in the doorway with his mouth hanging open, feeling like his brain has been replaced by canned air. Bucky, for the first time since he’d arrived, looks him directly in the eye for a split second before casting his eyes down again and says, “Thanks.” He doesn’t look any different than he did yesterday, but he has a slightly more relaxed air about him. <em>He must have been really hungry</em>, Steve thinks with a pang in his heart. That’s a good thought to have because it hands him his next move.</p>
<p>“I’m just gonna take these plates downstairs to wash,” he says, all casual-like, “and then I’m going to make some more food ‘cause that goddamn serum makes me want to eat fifteen times a day. I’m either choking down nutrient bars and protein shakes before and after every meal or I have to make a lot of food. And I mean <em>a lot</em>. Like, usually about this time of day I make myself a whole stack of peanut butter toast, and it’s no problem to make more, I buy like five loaves of bread at a time and peanut butter in bulk at Costco, so if you’re still peckish just come downstairs, I’ll make some toast for you, too, it’s not a problem at all, and if we eat all the peanut butter there’s jam and butter and Nutella and...”</p>
<p>Steve realizes that he’s started to ramble, and his voice is going higher and higher with every word. Bucky is looking up at him now, or rather near him, focused somewhere over his left shoulder. “Ok, well, bye then,” Steve squeaks out and runs down the stairs before his mouth disengages completely from his brain and starts to run on autopilot.</p>
<p>He goes into the kitchen and takes a fresh loaf of bread down from the top of the refrigerator. He likes to buy whole wheat bakery bread from the place down on Nostrand Avenue, and although the five loaves at a time was something of an exaggeration, he does have one whole loaf left and he can always run out and get some more later. He has a gigantic toaster with four slots and settings for bagels and defrosting, and every time he uses it, he thinks, <em>the future is amazing</em>. He pops four slices in and pushes the lever down and goes into the pantry to look for the peanut butter. He wasn’t lying about that; he really does buy it in bulk at Costco in giant firkins. Future peanut butter is also amazing, so rich and impossibly creamy that he sometimes—oftentimes—just eats it straight from the barrel with a spoon, hence the need to buy in bulk.</p>
<p>He’s moving some things around on the floor of the pantry when the toaster pops with a loud <em>ca-chunk</em> and there’s a startled hiss from the doorway. He backs slowly out of the pantry and sees Bucky in a fighting stance on the threshold of the kitchen, a knife ready to throw in his right hand and what Steve can only call a glare of consternation on his face, his eyebrows almost touching in the middle. Steve turns to look in the direction of the glare and sees the toaster with its four browned slices peeking over the top.</p>
<p>He turns back to Bucky, who has disappeared the knife and is back to looking lost and confused. “Hey pal, I’m glad you came downstairs. Did you want some toast? Don’t worry about the toaster, it always startles me, too. But, uh, maybe don’t throw a knife at it. I’d have to buy a new one.” Steve thinks that Bucky might look slightly embarrassed, but it’s hard to tell. Bucky stalks over to the toaster, pulls out a piece of toast, and looks at it expectantly. “Yeah, just let me get the peanut butter out of the pantry here and then we’ll be in business,” Steve says.</p>
<p>He makes half a loaf’s worth of peanut butter toast, and when Bucky eats steadily through the whole stack, he makes the other half, too. As each slice vanishes, Bucky’s aura of excruciating tension lessens, until Steve feels confident enough to ask, “Did they give you enough to eat at SHIELD?” Bucky narrows his eyes and stares at Steve’s left shoulder again, and then says, “Don’t think so.” His voice is soft and rough around the edges, probably from disuse, and Steve’s heart cracks a little. It’s the most he’s said in the last twenty-four hours, and Steve feels ridiculously relieved that he’s moved beyond “yes” and “no”.</p>
<p>But at the same time, he can feel his mouth draw down at the corners, and after a moment Bucky clears his throat and adds, “Didn’t want them to know.” There’s a long pause. “How much energy I burn.” Steve can hardly parse this, or untangle the surge of feelings in his chest. He knows from Dr. Zaidi that Bucky refused any sort of medical testing or intervention, wouldn’t even set foot in a room if there was a lab coat in it, and she swore up and down that she would never authorize it without his consent. However, he also knows that SHIELD hasn’t given Bucky up; they’re merely biding their time until Steve can whip him into a more amenable shape, and then they’ll be back to ask about blood samples and CAT scans.</p>
<p>He looks at Bucky packing away the last slice of peanut butter toast and wiping the crumbs off his mouth with the back of his human hand and says, “I understand,” trying to put as much meaning into the words as he can, trying to say <em>You’ve been through so much</em> and <em>I’m so happy you’re here</em> and <em>You don’t have to worry about anything now</em> and <em>I’ll never let them take you again</em>. </p><hr/>
<p>After breakfast on Monday, he calls Dr. Zaidi, Bucky’s SHIELD therapist, as promised. Bucky is shut up in his bedroom again, and Steve sits in the armchair that’s furthest away from the stairs in the vain hope that maybe Bucky won’t be able to hear him.</p>
<p>“Captain Rogers,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice over the phone. “I’m so glad you called. How is everything?”</p>
<p>“Good,” he says, trying to put as much confidence into it as he can. “As expected, I guess.”</p>
<p>“You guess? That tells me nothing,” she laughs. “I’m afraid you’re going to need to be a little more specific.”</p>
<p>Steve sighs. “Well, the first day I couldn’t get him to come out of his room or even open the door, and he didn’t eat anything and I didn’t want to <em>make </em>him eat anything, you know? So I didn’t know what to do except leave him alone, but on Saturday morning I got him to come downstairs and eat some toast, and it was obvious he was <em>so</em> hungry, but since then he’s come out of his room for meals but only meals, and then he goes back upstairs and spends all day alone and he’s has barely said a dozen words in the last three days and…”</p>
<p>He pauses to take a breath, and Dr. Zaidi pounces. “Captain Rogers, let me get a word in edgewise, would you?” He can imagine perfectly the smile on her face, kind, compassionate, and a little exasperated.</p>
<p>“Yeah, sorry,” he says, running his free hand through his hair. “It’s just… I’m just a little…”</p>
<p>“Overwhelmed?” she asks softly.</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>“That’s also to be expected,” she says. “The situation is overwhelming. I think you’re probably doing just fine, and it’s important to give him the space to make his own decisions, interact the way he wants to interact, and retreat to a place where he feels safe when he needs to.”</p>
<p>When she puts it that way, it sounds perfectly normal. “Would you mind handing the phone over to him?” she then asks. “So I can get his take on how he’s feeling.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, of course, hold on a minute.” Steve heaves himself out of the chair and walks through the archway into the hall and up the stairs. He holds the phone to his chest and knocks on the door.</p>
<p>
  <em>Knock knock knock.</em>
</p>
<p>Bucky opens it almost immediately, and looks from Steve’s left ear to the phone clutched in his hand and back to his ear again. “Um,” says Steve, “Last week Dr. Zaidi asked me to call her today to check in, so I did, and she says she’d like to talk to you.”</p>
<p>Bucky nods and holds his hand out. Steve holds the phone up to his ear again and says, “I’m going to give it to Bucky now, talk to you later,” and then passes it over without waiting for an answer. Bucky puts the phone to his own ear and says, “Hi,” and then unceremoniously shuts the door in Steve’s face.</p>
<p>Steve stands frozen in the hallway for half a minute, trying not to feel the little jolt of hurt that pierces his heart, listening to the low murmur of Bucky’s voice listing all of the things that he has eaten in the last three days, a frankly astounding amount of words considering what little he’s said to Steve. Then he realizes with a start that he’s half-eavesdropping and dashes back down the stairs without further ado.</p>
<p>Half an hour later he’s in the kitchen morosely spreading peanut butter from the firkin onto a whole, unpeeled apple when there’s the soft sound of someone scuffing a foot on the wooden floor. He looks over to see Bucky standing in the doorway, Steve’s phone held out in his right hand. He knows Bucky’s just going to escape straight back upstairs again, but he still can’t help the pleased little flip-flop his stomach does just seeing him there, framed by the jambs and looking shyly at Steve’s feet.</p>
<p>“Everything okay?” he asks, just for something to say, and reaches out to take the phone. Bucky nods and then scuffs his foot again, like a hesitant child. He looks at Steve’s hand and says, “Any more apples?”</p>
<p>Steve grins, the little flip-flop turning into something stronger, but less definable. “There’s a whole bag in the pantry. Feel like a snack?” Bucky nods again and his eyes dart around the kitchen. “If you want to go sit down in the dining room, I’ll bring you the peanut butter and the apples and a knife to cut them up with. They’re better if you cut them up first,” Steve says, looking at the whole apple in his hand and its sad glob of peanut butter, a little embarrassed.</p>
<p>Bucky reaches behind him with his left hand and suddenly there’s a short, deadly-looking knife in it, and Steve can’t help but give a nervous giggle. Bucky holds it out with the handle toward Steve, and after a moment of confusion, he realizes that he’s being offered the knife to cut up his apple. “Thanks, but I’ve got a paring knife that does the trick, and I’m not sure I trust myself with one of yours.” Bucky shrugs and somehow manages to look amused without even the hint of a smile on his face. He disappears the knife behind his back and walks into the dining room.</p>
<p>After that, they settle into something of a routine. Bucky still spends most of the day in his bedroom with the door closed, but he comes downstairs and sits quietly at the dining room table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus the between-meal snacks that Steve thinks of, inanely, as <em>elevenses</em> and <em>teatime</em>. Sometimes he even lingers after he finishes eating, clearly trying to balance the urge to flee back upstairs with the desire to stay, to be present, to have company.</p>
<p>Steve has never spent so much time in the kitchen in his life, slicing onions, boiling pasta, tossing stir-fry, and flipping pancakes, but he finds out that he really enjoys it. One evening, as he’s putting on the oven mitts to check on a lasagna, he hears his therapist’s voice in his head, clear as a bell: <em>your enjoyment is derived from the fact that food preparation has become an exercise in caregiving rather than a mechanical top-up of the body’s nutrient tanks, as it had been before, when you were alone</em>.</p>
<p>This thought is uncontrollably followed by another one: <em>I’m not alone anymore</em>. He looks over his shoulder, through the kitchen door, to where Bucky is sitting at his usual place at the head of the dining table, and he feels an unconstrainable smile breaking out across his face, the barest hint of threatening tears along its bright edge. </p>
<p>
  <em>I’m not alone anymore.</em>
</p>
<p>Bucky is still looking past Steve’s left ear, but slowly, gingerly, one side of his mouth quirks up. Steve feels giddy, he wants to shout, or faint, or something to relieve the carbonated pressure that is bubbling up inside of him. Instead, he laughs, short and cheerful, and opens the oven door.</p><hr/>
<p>One morning, a week after Bucky arrives, Natasha calls Steve and says, “I’m coming over. ETA twenty minutes,” and then hangs up before he can reply.</p>
<p>He immediately dashes upstairs and knocks on Bucky’s door.</p>
<p>
  <em>Knock knock knock</em>
</p>
<p>There’s no answer for a moment, and then Steve hears the distinctive clinking sound of metal on glass, tapping out his signal to come in.</p>
<p><em>Clink </em>pause<em> clink clink clink</em></p>
<p>Bucky is standing in front of the window, looking out over the backyard. His human hand is resting on the windowsill, his metal hand pressed against the glass, fingers spread. He turns around and looks over his shoulder at Steve, who, for one very long minute, can’t speak. The morning sun, bright at this low angle, is shining in through the window, catching Bucky in profile, illuminating the outline of his nose and lips and dimpled chin, while leaving the planes of his face in shadow. He looks like a solar eclipse.</p>
<p>When Bucky’s eyes flick from his left shoulder to his eyes and back again, Steve realizes with a start that he’s been staring. He clears his throat to cut through the mortification and says, “Nat just called, she said she’s coming over. She’ll be here in twenty minutes. You don’t have to come out, of course, I just wanted to let you know.” He waits for Bucky to nod, and then turns on his heel and and gathers up all of his embarrassment and leaves, closing the door softly behind him.</p>
<p>Exactly eighteen minutes later there’s a soft knock at the front door, and when Steve opens up, Natasha crowds him over the threshold and gets in his face, looking him over with her calculating eyes like a butcher inspecting a side of beef. Then she stands on tiptoe to give him a peck on the cheek and says, “You look good.”</p>
<p>Steve is a little staggered by the kiss, he’d never thought they were <em>that</em> kind of friends, not outside of that one kiss on the escalator. But that was spy business, and he also knows that the day Natasha stops surprising him is a day that’s never gonna come, so after a moment he shrugs it off.</p>
<p>She looks over his shoulder and nods. “Barnes.”</p>
<p>Steve turns around and sees Bucky standing halfway down the stairs, his human hand on the banister. Seen from below like this, foreshortened slightly, and with his rumpled hair and baggy SHIELD sweats, he looks awfully young and vulnerable. Steve has a split-second flashback to standing on the sidewalk in front of Bucky’s house, craning his neck to look up at the second-floor fire escape where Bucky is standing in his bare feet and too-big pajamas. He’s explaining that Steve can’t come up to play because he’s got a cold and then Steve’ll catch it too and if Steve catches it, he’s gonna go to the hospital <em>again</em> but he’ll be better in a couple of days and until then Steve’d better take care of himself and not get into any fights, at which point he shakes his small fist threateningly.</p>
<p>In the present, Bucky regards Natasha for a moment more and says, “James.”</p>
<p>She nods at him again. “Hello, James.”</p>
<p>Then she turns back to Steve and says, “Have you bought him any real clothes or is he just going to wear those depressing potato sacks forever?”</p>
<p>Steve opens and closes his mouth like a goldfish, looking back and forth between a smirking Natasha and an inscrutable Bucky.</p>
<p>“That’s what I thought,” she says, satisfied. “And that’s why I’m here. We’re going shopping.”</p>
<p>“Oh, uh, oh,” says Steve, helpfully. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” He looks at Bucky again, who has moved back to the top of the stairs and is clutching at the finial with both hands.</p>
<p>“I don’t mean James,” Natasha says. “I mean you and me. And Clint, who’s waiting in the car. I think we can hit up Uniqlo on 5th Avenue and get everything we need.”</p>
<p>“Manhattan?” Steve says. “I don’t know if I can go all the way to Manhattan.” He turns around and looks at Bucky, who is halfway back down the stairs again. “How do you feel about staying by yourself for a few hours?”</p>
<p>Bucky’s expression doesn’t change, but he shakes his head just once.</p>
<p>Natasha looks neither surprised nor disappointed. “Well, I figured I’d try. So, it’ll be me and Clint and your debit card. It’s not like we need you for your fashion sense, anyway.” She holds her hand out while Steve rummages through the pockets of the jackets hanging in the hall looking for his wallet.</p>
<p>While he’s busy, she looks back at Bucky and says, “Have you been out of the house since you got here?”</p>
<p>Bucky hesitates a moment, then says, “Yesterday. The bakery.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, he came with me to get bread,” says Steve, flipping through his wallet and extracting his debit card. “It was… a success. But a little stressful.” He smiles up at Bucky on the staircase, and though Bucky doesn’t smile back, his face softens in some indefinable way. “And I’ve been out nearly every day to run errands by myself, but only for 20 minutes or so.”</p>
<p>Natasha hides the debit card somewhere in her intimidating motorcycle jacket and then narrows her eyes at him. “Did you see your therapist last week?”</p>
<p><em>Fuck.</em> He should have known she’d catch him out. “Uh, no, I canceled,” he says. Natasha frowns in disapproval. “I… I didn’t think it was a good idea. I mean, her office is in Bed-Stuy, I’d have to be gone for at least an hour and a half and that’s if I took the bike and there was no traffic and…”</p>
<p>“Steve.” He snaps his mouth shut on the last word, and she turns to look up at Bucky. “James, have you talked to your therapist since you left SHIELD?” He doesn’t say anything but he must have nodded because Natasha looks infinitesimally more smug and turns back to Steve again. “If you’re worried about leaving the house for too long, you can always talk to her on the phone,” she says. “Just like James does.”</p>
<p>Steve allows himself to glower for a moment before he heaves a sigh and concedes. “Fine. I’ll send her a message tomorrow. Can we get on with it?”</p>
<p>Natasha extracts a slip of paper and a tiny pencil. “James, would you mind coming down to the bottom of the stairs, please? I need to get a better look at you so that I can estimate your size.”</p>
<p>Bucky hesitates for a moment and then walks slowly down the stairs. The second stair from the bottom doesn’t creak. <em>Why doesn’t it creak?</em> Steve thinks, annoyed all over again.<em> It always creaks when I step on it.</em></p>
<p>“Steve, go over and stand next to him, please. Parade rest, both of you. Thanks.” Natasha prowls around them making little notations on the slip of paper and muttering to herself.</p>
<p>Standing this close to him, Steve can make out the rabbity rush of Bucky’s heartbeat. He’s standing at ease, breathing in and out slowly and evenly, but his heart gives him away to Steve’s practiced ear. Without even thinking about what he’s doing, he sticks his elbow out and knocks it gently against Bucky’s. Bucky’s heartbeat kicks up a notch and then, when he glances at Steve out of the corner of his eye and Steve gives him an ostentatious wink, starts to slow down. Slower and slower until he seems almost relaxed, if it weren’t for the tension that Steve can still feel humming through his bones like the subaudible sound of an electrical current.</p>
<p>“You’re almost exactly the same size as Steve,” Natasha says, coming back around to stand in front of them, “just a little shorter. Not quite as broad in the shoulders, but a little sturdier through the hips. That makes it pretty easy.”</p>
<p>“Do you have my measurements memorized?” Steve asks.</p>
<p>Natasha shoots him A Look, but, like all of Natasha’s looks, it clarifies exactly nothing.</p>
<p>“James, what size are your boots?”</p>
<p>“Forty-three.”</p>
<p>“European?”</p>
<p>Bucky nods, looking uncomfortable again. He shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet.</p>
<p>“I assume you have nothing to your name but those terrible SHIELD sweats and your tac suit, right?” Bucky nods again and steps backwards onto the bottom stair, looking like a cat when the vacuum comes out of the closet. “So, for starters, and later when it gets warm you’re going to have to go shopping again for yourself, we’ll get you a couple pairs of jeans, some t-shirts, a hoodie. How do you like your jeans to fit, tighter, like everybody nowadays, or looser, like grandpa over here?” She jerks a thumb at Steve, who says, “Hey!”</p>
<p>Bucky backs up the stairs until he’s at the very top again, clears his throat, and says, “Tighter.” Then he bolts into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.</p>
<p>Steve turns around to see Natasha nodding, an appreciative look on her face. “Not bad,” she says. “He got through a lot of interaction before he got jumpy.”</p>
<p>“Well, you didn’t help, prowling around looking at him like a piece of meat,” Steve says, accusingly.</p>
<p>Natasha fixes him with another Look from the archive. “Steve, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed what he’s got going on. Even the baggy sweats can’t hide a body like that.” She lowers her voice until Steve has to strain to hear her. “I <em>know</em> you remember the murder strut from the bridge.”</p>
<p>Steve blushes crimson, immediately, and Natasha flips her hair over her shoulder and continues. “Anyway, underwear. Boxers, briefs, boxer briefs?”</p>
<p>“Actually…” Steve squeaks, “I’ve been lending him mine. But, uh, you could get some boxer briefs. Black?”</p>
<p>Natasha wrinkles her nose, but makes no comment. “Running shoes and workout clothes?” he nods. “And sneakers. And does he need a coat?”</p>
<p>“Nah, he took one of mine yesterday when we went out, and I have a few to spare. So no coat. But maybe pajamas? I have no idea how he likes to sleep. Just get him something and if he doesn’t want it, I’ll wear it myself or return it. You have carte blanche.”</p>
<p>“I know,” Natasha says smugly.</p>
<p>She hides the pencil and the piece of paper in her jacket, and is about to say something else when a car horn sounds outside. “Oops, Clint’s double parked, I gotta go,” she says as she slips out the door.</p><hr/>
<p>The next day, Natasha and Clint come back in the evening with two huge shopping bags and Chinese takeout.</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t come downstairs when they arrive, so after Steve checks the bags over, he carries them upstairs and knocks on his door.</p>
<p>
  <em>Knock knock knock</em>
</p>
<p>The door immediately opens, and there’s Bucky, in the same tired sweats that smell like Steve’s detergent, now, his brow creased. Steve hands the two bags over and says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, “Nat and Clint brought Chinese, so I’m going to set the table and then we’ll eat. Do you feel like coming downstairs to eat with us?” He tries not to make it sound too hopeful.</p>
<p>“Okay,” Bucky says, and closes the door in Steve’s face.</p>
<p>Five minutes later, Steve is folding the napkins with his back to the living room and Natasha is spreading the open takeout containers around the table when all of a sudden, Clint’s eyes bug out and his mouth drops open as he stares over Steve’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Steve whirls around and there stands Bucky, dressed in a pair of tight, black jeans and a dark blue V-neck, long-sleeved shirt. The jeans fit perfectly, not so tight that they look like a second skin, but tight enough that they highlight his narrow hips and predatory thighs. The t-shirt clings to his shoulders and the point of its V frames a little patch of dark chest hair. The color of the shirt makes his eyes look like lapis lazuli ground to pigment in a mortar. He’s obviously combed his hair and it hangs soft and dark around his face. He’s not looking at any of them, but one side of his mouth is quirked up. Steve knows he shouldn’t stare, that he’s going to make Bucky uncomfortable, and if he’s uncomfortable he’s going to bolt right back upstairs again, but he can’t tear his eyes away. <em>He looks good</em>, Steve thinks. <em>He looks really, really good. Really, really, really, really…</em></p>
<p>The moment passes and Natasha smacks both Steve and Clint on the back of the head at the same time. Then she says, ignoring their spluttering, “Hello, James, it’s nice to see you. If these two assholes weren’t so rude, we could be sitting down and stuffing our faces by now.”</p>
<p>That’s all it takes to break the ice, and they sit down at the table, shuffling around to give Bucky his usual seat at the head. He doesn’t talk besides the occasional “please” and “thank you,” but his silence is comfortable enough, almost companionable.</p>
<p>As soon as they’ve finished eating, he stands up, on the point of escaping back upstairs, but Natasha says, “Wait a second, James.” She reaches around to the sideboard and picks up a small matte black shopping bag. “This is for your hair. I know that <em>Steve</em>,”—here she swivels her head and pins him with a glare—“washes his hair with the same bar of soap that he uses to wash his ass…”</p>
<p>Here Steve interrupts with an indignant squawk, “Hey! I buy actual shampoo nowadays!”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t count if it’s the cheapest shampoo at the drugstore,” she says primly. “Anyway, James, you obviously have more class, so I took the liberty of picking up some basics to get you started. All of the bottles have instructions on the back, but if you have any questions, just get Steve to text me.”</p>
<p>He takes the bag awkwardly, looking startled but pleased. “Thanks,” he murmurs, then nods at Natasha, who smiles warmly, and practically dashes out of the room.</p>
<p>Later, after the takeout containers have been rinsed and the dishwasher loaded, Steve stands on the stoop with Natasha and Clint. “Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate you looking out for us.” He rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “You both know I can only sort of take care of myself. It’s been an adjustment trying to take care of somebody else, too.”</p>
<p>“You’re doing a great job, man,” Clint says earnestly. “He looks great. And the fact that he came downstairs to eat with us <em>in his new clothes</em> says volumes about how well he’s adjusting.”</p>
<p>Natasha squeezes Steve’s arm and gives him a warm smile. “Keep up the good work, Steve.” Then her eyes narrow a fraction and she looks at him a little more intently. “And look, I know it’s early. Far too early. But when you get the opportunity, don’t let it slip through your fingers.” Steve frowns, confused, and starts to ask what she’s talking about, but she squeezes his arm again, harder, and then turns to go.</p><hr/>
<p>On Monday morning, as they’re finishing breakfast, Bucky swiping the last forkful of pancake through the puddle of syrup on his plate, Steve says, “I, uh, I have to call my therapist this morning.” He doesn’t really know why he says it, Bucky will be back upstairs with the door shut in twenty minutes, anyway. Maybe it helps him feel obligated once he tells someone else about it. If he doesn’t call his therapist, Bucky might be, god forbid, disappointed in him, and obviously he can’t have that. So telling him about it actually forces Steve to go through with it.</p>
<p>“Good,” Bucky says around the last mouthful of pancake.</p>
<p>“I could go for another week or two without talking to her, though, it’s not a big deal,” Steve says. He feels the flutter of nerves in his stomach, but he doesn’t know if he’s nervous about therapy or nervous about telling Bucky or what’s going on in there. He’s sitting with his back to the sideboard, staring out the living room window that overlooks the tiny front yard. The sky is a low, uniform grey and one of the houses on the other side of the street has a stream of smoke rising up in thin, white ribbon from the chimney.</p>
<p>All of a sudden, he feels a little tap on his wrist, and he glances down. Bucky is tapping him softly with the little finger of his human hand, and when Steve looks up at him, he meets his eye for a long second and says, “It’s okay.”</p>
<p>Steve, absurdly, feels the flutter of nerves turn into a hard knot of tears and he grinds his teeth together, looking at the tapping finger with its petal-pink, carefully-cut nail until Bucky pulls his hand away. Then Bucky pushes his chair back and stands up, gathering both of their plates and the silverware and walking into the kitchen. Steve just stares at him as he goes; this is a new behavior, and it surprises him. <em>But maybe it shouldn’t,</em> he thinks.</p>
<p>The plates clink in the sink and Bucky comes back through the doorway, dusting his hands on his thighs. He hesitates in the archway between the dining room and the living room, clearly about to go back upstairs, and then turns to Steve and says, “I won’t listen.”</p>
<p>“I… I didn’t think you would,” Steve says, taken aback. But a little bit of the tension inside him disappears, anyway.</p>
<p>Bucky looks down at his hands and brushes a piece of invisible lint from between his metal fingers. “It’s good for you,” he says, not meeting Steve’s eye. “I’m glad you’re doing it.”</p>
<p>“I…” is the only thing Steve can find to say, so staggered is he by the declaration. He swallows roughly and then finds his voice. “Thanks. That means a lot. Thanks.” Bucky nods once and then disappears.</p><hr/>
<p>“Dr. Castano,” Steve says when she picks up the phone. “Sorry for cancelling on you last week.”</p>
<p>She laughs down the line at him, her warm, rich voice like hot cider in December. “I expected it, to tell you the truth,” she says. “But I’m glad you didn’t cancel this week, too.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how well I’m going to do over the phone, though,” Steve says, and he really means it. He loves Dr. Castaño’s office, in an old pre-war building near Fulton Street. It has tall ceilings that make the top of his head feel open to the sky and warm, uneven, wide-plank floors that creak reassuringly every time he shifts his weight in his chair. The walls are the color of new cream and the corner behind Dr. Castaño’s desk is lined with stained-oak shelves, filled to bursting with books. It gives him something soothing to run his eyes over when he’s talking.</p>
<p>“Nevermind,” she says, “You’ll do as well as you do, and then when you come back to my office, we’ll get back into the groove again.”</p>
<p>Steve slouches farther down in the armchair and kicks his feet up on the coffee table. This, at least, is a perk to having therapy over the phone from the comforts of your own home.</p>
<p>“So,” he starts, “you know I was going to bring Bucky home Friday before last, and it’s been a pretty good ten days.”</p>
<p>“Has it?” she says, and Steve sighs resignedly. Here comes Dr. Castaño with her questions to disrupt his thin veneer of assurance and expose the doubt, like a gardener turning over turf with a spade.</p>
<p>“I mean, I haven’t had any nightmares since the last time we talked.”</p>
<p>“Well, that doesn’t mean much,” she says frankly. “The frequency of your nightmares has been declining steadily since September.”</p>
<p>Steve crosses his feet at the ankles and jiggles one foot in irritation. “Yeah, I guess so. I guess I wanted to see it as a sign. I want to see signs everywhere.”</p>
<p>“Signs of what?” she asks.</p>
<p>“Hmm. I dunno.” He looks out the window. It’s so dark and grey that he still has the lamp on beside the armchair, even though it’s already half past ten. “A sign that this is working? A sign that I made the right decision.”</p>
<p>“What form might a sign like that take?”</p>
<p>“Well, like I said, that I hadn’t had any nightmares. I was thinking that maybe just having him here was a comfort to my subconscious or something, because there’s still that part of me that wants to go back to 1938 again.” Steve glances down at the ratty shirt he’s wearing as pajamas. There was a tiny pin-sized hole near the hem, but he’s worried it into something big enough to stick his thumb through in the last three minutes alone. “But I know you know that.” He switches the phone to his other ear and leans over and grabs his sketchbook and pencil off the windowsill.</p>
<p>“Then you know what I’m going to say,” Dr. Castaño says with a laugh.</p>
<p>Steve rolls his eyes. It’s a constant refrain, something that they’ve been going over and over since he came into her office that first time, scared and confused and grief-stricken and liable to jump five feet in the air when a car backfired. “Yes, of course. That it’s okay to mourn the things I’ve lost and that that doesn’t diminish the things I have in the present.”</p>
<p>“Do you still feel guilty about it?” she asks.</p>
<p>“You know I do,” he says flippantly. He opens the sketchbook to the first blank page and starts to draw the smoke coming out of the chimney across the street, great grey plumes of it, now.</p>
<p>Even if he can’t see her, Steve knows that Dr. Castaño is smiling on the other end of the phone.  “We’ll come back to that another day. And let’s stop thinking about signs for a moment,” she continues. “Just look at the facts. Do you think you made the right decision? Do you think this is working?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” he says immediately, and once the word leaves his mouth, he knows it’s right. Sometimes Dr. Castaño’s spade works in the opposite direction, too, turning over a doubt to reveal a certainty underneath.</p>
<p>“If you know that it’s working, and you sound like you do, then why would you need to look for signs?”</p>
<p>Steve scoffs. “My terminal case of self-doubt, of course.” The smoke on the page turns into his own hands stretching out a ball of pizza dough. He draws a little tear in the thin sheet of dough just to spite himself. “But also, I guess, because this feels really important. Too important just to leave up to my own terrible judgement. I need a sign from the universe that I’m doing the right thing.”</p>
<p>“Is your judgement really that terrible?”</p>
<p>“Yes! Sometimes.” Steve thinks about all times he’s jumped out of airplanes with no parachute. “Maybe not in this, I don’t know. I don’t know how to determine that.”</p>
<p>Dr. Castaño makes a noncommittal noise and then says, “So what else are you looking for a sign of?”</p>
<p>“Maybe…” He wishes, and not for the first time, that he had a list of the questions she was going to ask him beforehand so that he could prepare his answers. “This isn’t related to the nightmares. But I think I keep looking for a sign that he still feels about me the way I feel about him.”</p>
<p>“And how is that?”</p>
<p>“You know that, too, we’ve already talked about this,” he huffs. He gets so irritated sometimes, when she makes him repeat himself, even if he knows there’s a clinical basis for it and that Dr. Castaño’s just doing her job. An excellent job, too; sometimes he thinks back to the way he was before he started seeing her and he can’t believe that he survived so long.</p>
<p>“How about you tell me anyway,” she says, infinitely patient.</p>
<p>“He’s… I feel like he’s still my best friend. The person who is most important to me in the world. I’d sacrifice anything for him, do anything I could to make him happy.”</p>
<p>“Do you feel love for him?”</p>
<p>“Of course I do,” he says, without even thinking about it, even a little affronted that she had to ask the question. But then she blindsides him with something she’s never even hinted at before.</p>
<p>“Do you have romantic feelings for him?”</p>
<p>Steve flushes bright red, immediately, though he’d be hard pressed to articulate why.</p>
<p>“Steve, I can hear you blushing over the phone,” Dr. Castaño says with a smile in her voice. One of the reasons why he likes her is because she doesn’t treat him like he’s made of glass. If he blushes, she points it out. If he cries, she doesn’t pat him on the back and say “there, there, it’ll be okay.” She just hands him a kleenex and then makes him talk about it.</p>
<p>“You know me too well,” he says. “I need another shrink.” They both laugh. Steve would have to be pried out of Dr. Castaño’s patient list with a crowbar and they both know it, though he periodically threatens to find another shrink. It’s a running joke.</p>
<p>“Why did you blush? What did you feel when I said that?”</p>
<p>“Embarrassment. I feel the same way when Nat… when my coworkers try to set me up with women they know.”</p>
<p>“Just women?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m not… nobody knows.” Again, this is something they’ve talked around, and he’s dreading the day when she asks him directly why he hasn’t come out. He knows that he doesn’t <em>have</em> to. He knows that he doesn’t owe anybody anything. But still.</p>
<p>“So why does it make you feel embarrassed to talk about romance?”</p>
<p>“It’s not romance, it’s <em>my </em>love life in particular. I don’t have much experience. I guess I still kind of feel like a teenager in that respect.”</p>
<p>“Is more experience something you’d like to have?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, of course, who wouldn’t?” The stream-of-consciousness doodling has covered the page with pizzas, mushrooms, a clump of mushrooms growing out of a pillow of moss, the pillow on his own bed, punched down in the middle, and Bucky’s left hand, holding a fork.</p>
<p>“Well, plenty of people. Have you ever heard of the terms ‘asexual’ or ‘demisexual’?</p>
<p>“I… I have, actually. I did a lot of… of research when I first came out of the ice.” He sends a silent thanks to the universe for the internet for the umpteenth time in the last four years.</p>
<p>“Do you think either one of those terms applies to you?”</p>
<p>“I… I don’t know. Asexual, no. Definitely not. I don’t know. It’s all mixed up with my feelings about being bi, about… about all that.”</p>
<p>“So back to my original question. Do you have romantic feelings for Barnes?”</p>
<p>“I… no. He’s my best friend.”</p>
<p>“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”</p>
<p>“I know, I know,” Steve says. He tries to be as honest as he possibly can in therapy, knows that Dr. Castaño can’t do her job if he doesn’t give her the whole truth. But when he turns the phrase <em>do you have romantic feelings for him</em> over in his mind, a big red button with a gigantic question mark on it jumps up in front of him like a game show buzzer, and he’s not about to press it. Not today. “It’s just… no. No, I don’t,” he says decisively.</p>
<p>Dr. Castaño makes no comment, but he can hear the <em>scritch-scratch</em> of her pencil through the phone. Eventually they move on to other subjects, and when the call ends, he’s left feeling good, but a little unsatisfied, fluff with no substance, like a mouthful of cotton candy. He shuts the sketchbook with a snap and goes into the kitchen in search of something to make for a snack.</p><hr/>
<p>One morning near the end of the month, Steve brings the mail in while Bucky is sitting at the dining table, nursing a cup of coffee. There are a few bills, some junk mail, and a catalogue from a seed company called Johnny’s. Steve scoops it into a pile with the rest of the junk mail and goes to throw it in the recycling bin, but Bucky says, “Can I see that?”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“That thing with the flowers.”</p>
<p>Steve slides the catalogue out from under the rest of the junk mail and pushes it across the table. Bucky says nothing else but takes the catalogue and his half-finished cup of coffee and goes back to his room, shutting the door. Steve rifles through the junk mail again to make sure there’s nothing else that Bucky might find interesting and tosses it all in the recycling bin.</p>
<p>The next day, Steve comes back from his morning run to find the house empty. After he kicks off his running shoes in the entryway, he’s padding wearily up the stairs thinking about a hot shower when he notices that the door to Bucky’s room is halfway open, and he’s not inside. He takes the last three stairs in one bound and rushes in. <em>There’s no reason to panic</em>, he tells himself, his constant refrain, except for the fact that Bucky is always in his room at this time of day, and even if he’s not, the door is always shut tight like a mouth with a secret to keep.</p>
<p>The bed is made, the duvet tucked tightly under the mattress all the way around and the yellow quilt with the flower pattern folded neatly at the foot. Other than the fact that every surface is free of dust, there’s no way to tell that anyone has been in this room in the last year. There are no battered paperbacks or creased notebooks, no shoes or rumpled clothes on the floor. Nothing that could be used to identify the occupant of the room, or even determine when the last occupant was here. Steve suspects that Bucky might actually wipe his room clean of prints every day, like another person might tidy up.</p>
<p>He starts to dash downstairs again, but stops on the middle stair, halfway up and halfway down like an indecisive Chihuahua. “Bucky?” he calls into the silence of the house. There’s no answer. He feels the itch of sweat drying on his back between his shoulder blades, and he’s starting to feel a little cold, but he doesn’t head for the shower. Instead, he goes back up the stairs again and does a quick sweep of Bucky’s room, checking the closet where he finds Bucky’s clothes folded with department-store neatness, and then sweeps his own and sticks his head through the door of the studio, where there’s nothing but his neglected easel, a rolling cart with a messy pile of half-used paint tubes, and a wooden stool.</p>
<p>He walks back down the stairs, forcing himself to move slowly—<em>There’s no reason to panic—</em>and into the living room. “Bucky?” he calls again. “Are you in here?” It’s a silly question, there’s nowhere to hide in the living room, and he’s clearly not crouched under the dining room table. Steve feels the knife of panic that’s already lodged in the pit of his stomach give a little twist. He goes into the kitchen and pulls open the door of the pantry space underneath the staircase, although he knows that Bucky, almost as tall and as broad as Steve himself, wouldn’t have been able to close the door if he had been crouching down inside.</p>
<p>He pulls open the door beside the sink and slams it against the wall in his haste. He’s starting to feel more than a stab of panic, now. He thinks about calling Natasha but figures he should rule out any other hiding places; it’s the first thing she’ll ask him, anyway. He pushes open the screen door that opens out onto the small back deck and jumps over the railing, not bothering with the stairs in his hurry. The garden is full of weeds, and there are some low shrubs around the perimeter and a twisted tree with black, naked branches skulking in the back corner opposite the greenhouse. A quick glance under the deck tells him there’s nothing there but an old, broken-down push-mower. There’s only one place left.</p>
<p>Steve pulls the door of the greenhouse open on its rusty, complaining hinges and there he finds Bucky, sitting cross-legged on the brick walkway that crosses the center of the small space. He jerks his head up in surprise, his eyes catching on Steve’s legs in his running tights, and Steve feels such a flood of unexpected relief mixed with weird embarrassment that his knees threaten to buckle underneath him, and he has to lean against the warped wooden doorframe.</p>
<p>“There you are,” he says, and then kicks himself for letting so much relief show in his voice.</p>
<p>To his utter surprise, however, Bucky gives him the ghost of a smile and says, “Here I am.”</p>
<p>Steve really looks at him, now. He’s wearing a pair of grey sweatpants with zips at the ankles that came from Natasha’s shopping trip and Steve’s black bomber. Underneath the bomber is a faded green hoodie that says The North Face on the front. It’s Steve’s oldest, most favorite sleeping hoodie and yesterday, it had been in the laundry basket. He almost asks about it, but reaches out and catches the question right on the tip of his tongue. He has no idea why Bucky wants to pilfer his hoodie right from the dirty laundry when he’s got two or three clean ones of his own, but something tells him that he shouldn’t bring it up. Steve files it away for later, when he’s alone, and can puzzle over it like a raccoon washing a crawdad in a creek.</p>
<p>Even more interesting, however, is the fact that Bucky has a ballpoint pen in his right hand, a yellow legal pad balanced on his knee, and the catalogue from the day before open on the ground in front of him.</p>
<p>Now he looks Steve in the eye, pinning him to the doorframe. Steve clears his throat at the same time that Bucky says, “I need money. Do I have money?”</p>
<p>Steve is taken aback—no, staggered. This is the most conversation Bucky has made in the last month, and the fact that it’s <em>Do I have money</em> and not <em>Hey Steve what’s for dinner</em> or <em>Is there anything good on Netflix you haven’t seen yet </em>is, at the moment, incomprehensible. “I… I don’t know,” he says. “Hmm. Um. Did you have any money on you when you turned yourself in?”</p>
<p>Bucky glances down at the pen in his hand and furrows his brow, looking irritated. It’s also the most emotion that Steve has seen on his face in the last month, and he feels elated, and then a little guilty for feeling elated. “I had money. I don’t remember where it is. I left it somewhere, but I don’t know how to find it again.” Now he’s back to looking confused, and Steve is left reeling at the riches of information he’s suddenly being presented with.</p>
<p>Unable to do anything but look on as his mouth runs itself, he says, “Look, money isn’t a problem. Everything’s taken care of. I’m rich, remember? Back pay, interest, all that stuff.” He laughs, a little embarrassed, although Bucky already knows all of this. They’d talked about it back in SHIELD. Well, <em>he’d</em> talked about it back in SHIELD.</p>
<p>Bucky looks him in the eye again, his face inscrutable.</p>
<p>“What do you want money for, anyway?” Steve can’t help but ask.</p>
<p>Bucky looks down at the pen again, but this time he seems hesitant, as if he’s considering his answer carefully. He looks like he’s a little afraid of what Steve is going to think, and it makes Steve want to throw himself down onto his stomach on the cold, hard ground and put his chin on his fists and look at Bucky enraptured like he’s a toddler at story time.</p>
<p>But he waits, and then a moment later, Bucky points to the catalogue on the ground. “I… I want to buy some seeds.”</p><hr/>
<p>Afterwards, Steve has a shower and changes into sweatpants and his second-most favorite hoodie and makes them both BLTs for elevenses. Then they sit down on the couch with Steve’s laptop and his debit card. He’s afraid that he’s going to have to teach Bucky how to use the computer and the internet, the same way that SHIELD had a squeaky little intern knee-high to a grasshopper teach him when he came out of the ice, but Bucky knows exactly what he’s doing. Steve wants to ask how, but, mercifully, doesn’t.</p>
<p>He hands the laptop over and scoots down until he’s eye-level with Bucky’s shoulder. Telling himself that he needs to be close to see the screen, he sits so that their shoulders are almost touching, but he keeps his legs to himself, knees carefully pressed together. Bucky doesn’t scoot away or show that he’s uncomfortable in any way, so Steve lets himself slouch little by little, like the petals of a tulip two days past its prime.</p>
<p>It’s heady, being so close to him, closer than Bucky has let him be all month, or maybe closer than Steve had thought he was welcome to be, until now. Closer than the strange intimacy of the door in subbasement 3, closer than they’ve been since that cold, cursed morning in the Alps, overlooking a snowy ravine. Steve sighs, the breath escaping him against his will.</p>
<p>If he closes his eyes and ignores the <em>clickety-clack</em> of Bucky’s fingers on the keyboard and the way the house smells like bacon and dryer sheets with an undercurrent of organic cleaning products, it could be 1938 again, and they’re sitting on the one bed because they have no couch, propped up on their pillows while Bucky reads and Steve dozes on his shoulder.</p>
<p>He used to be such a physically present person, always bumping shoulders, reaching out to squeeze Steve’s arm, or ruffling his hair when he walked past. Always giving small touches here and there, to call Steve back to the conversation when his attention wandered, to keep in contact the way that suited him best, or just to show affection.</p>
<p>But since he’s been back, he hasn’t once reached out to Steve, and Steve in turn has given him a wide berth. So this is something new, and it’s nice, sitting on the couch so close that he can smell Bucky, warm and clean, as well as the scent of his own shampoo and deodorant and that indefinable essence of sleep on the hoodie that Bucky had swiped from his laundry basket. Just sitting with their shoulders almost pressed together. He’s tired, and this is so comfortable, in so many ways. He kicks his feet up on the coffee table, crosses his arms, and closes his eyes.</p>
<p>He’s almost asleep when Bucky murmurs, “What’s your favorite vegetable?” Steve rouses slightly, thinking. He’s never considered his favorite vegetable before. Way back when, they mostly ate stuff that came in cans or was boiled beyond recognition. But here in the future, vegetables come from the farmer’s market, sitting in the stalls in huge piles, damp and earthy and brilliantly colored, looking like they were pulled out of the ground that very morning. He sits up a little bit straighter, his eyes still closed, and thinks about what he likes to eat and what he likes to cook.</p>
<p>“Jeez, I dunno, I like most all vegetables nowadays, they’re so much tastier than they used to be. Even things like cabbage and turnips and rutabaga and cauliflower, once I figured out that you could roast them or stir-fry them or eat them raw rather than just boil them to death.”</p>
<p>“Eggplant?” Bucky asks.</p>
<p>“Yep, really good breaded and fried, or roasted in the oven and mashed up into this thing Nat showed me called baba ganoush. You eat it with bread and stuff.” Steve mimes scooping up dip with his fingers.</p>
<p>“Carrots?”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah, of course, carrots are great. I could eat a whole bunch of carrots every day. They’re sweeter than I remember them being, though. Did you know they make a thing now called baby carrots that is just, like, a regular carrot but sort of sculpted down to a little nub? Like, it’s not even a real baby carrot? Future people are so weird.” Bucky huffs softly through his nose and Steve cracks an eye at him. He’s got his mouth quirked up in the corner, enough to push the delicate skin around his eye into wrinkles, and it gives Steve a warm feeling in his chest like the glow of an incandescent bulb.</p>
<p>“Actually,” he says, “I don’t think there’s really any vegetable I don’t like. Well, maybe not artichokes, they taste okay but they’re too fiddly.”</p>
<p>He opens both eyes and stares through the big tripartite window at the bare branches of the sidewalk trees. There’s an oak right in front of the house that still has a few leaves hanging on, despite the rain and the snow and the wind that’s been blowing continuously since October, almost. A little ray of sun escapes from between the fast-moving clouds to illuminate a spot on the windowsill.</p>
<p>“Do you…” he hesitates. They haven’t talked about the past at all, not since Bucky left SHIELD. But it’s probably okay to start up again. “Do you remember that one time in France, it was winter, and we found that empty house and there was nothing in the cellar, but you went rummaging around anyway and found that pumpkin under the straw?”</p>
<p>Bucky narrows his eyes, searching his memory, such as it is. “No. I… I don’t think so. No.”</p>
<p>“Well, Dernier roasted it in one of those big cast-iron soup pots that we had to carry between two people. And then we ate it with spoons. It was so sweet, almost as good all by itself as your ma’s pumpkin pie.”</p>
<p>Bucky hums dubiously before he says, “That sounds unlikely.”</p>
<p>Steve closes his eyes again and smiles to himself.</p><hr/>
<p>The next time Steve opens his eyes, it’s because something is tapping on the palm of his hand. The spot of sun in the living room has moved from the windowsill to the foot of the couch. He blinks a few times and wiggles his toes, and then realizes that he’s sitting slumped over with his head on Bucky’s shoulder and his left hand lying palm up on Bucky’s thigh. Bucky is tapping softly on his palm with the index finger of his human hand.</p>
<p>Steve jumps away like a startled deer and says, “Oh shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you!” But Bucky just says, “S’ok.”</p>
<p>Steve feels himself, inexplicably, start to blush, but before he can fall all over himself in unnecessary apology, Bucky just says, “I ordered the seeds. But.” He hesitates, cuts his eyes over to Steve and then back down to his lap. “I need more stuff.”</p>
<p>“Okay, sure, like what?” asks Steve. He stands up and stretches because he feels like his whole left side is on fire, all the places that were touching Bucky, his shoulder and his thigh and the back of his hand. He’s suddenly conscious of the way that his shirt is riding up over his stomach to expose the elastic of his underwear over the waistband of his sweatpants, but Bucky’s fiddling with the laptop cord, not looking at him at all.</p>
<p>Steve feels a little dizzy, and he’s not sure if it’s because he stood up too fast, or… or what. A thought flashes across his mind, <em>I miss touching</em>, but he stuffs it back down in the darkness before he can form another coherent thought about it. He’ll think about it later, maybe tell Dr. Castaño about it. Maybe pretend it never existed in the first place, for as long as he can get away with it.</p>
<p>“Books?” Bucky says, looking Steve in the eye again, and then past his ear. “About gardens. Vegetables. More stuff, probably. I dunno what.”</p>
<p>“Sure, Buck, of course, but maybe you wanna tell me exactly what you need all these seeds and books and things for?”</p>
<p>Bucky’s eyes drop to Steve’s feet and his mouth does a little twist. Steve can’t tell what his expression is conveying—consternation? Hurt? Fear? Shit, he used to be able to look at Bucky’s open, expressive face and read his thoughts like a billboard in Times Square. But now his face is a closed book, or maybe an open book but with all of the pages blank. Not the clean, pristine blankness of a new sketchbook fresh from the art supply store, more like the blankness of a chalkboard that hasn’t been properly cleaned, only erased again and again. Which, he supposes, is exactly what he is.</p>
<p>
  <em>Shit.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Shit!</em>
</p>
<p>At any rate, he knows that his own face is an open book, a children’s book, something with bright colors that hide nothing, but he doesn’t want Bucky to see his dark thoughts, so he tries hard for a moment to school his expression.</p>
<p>Then he crouches down in front of the couch and taps Bucky on the knee. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that, I’m really happy for you to do something with the backyard, god knows I’ve only set foot out there about two times since I moved in. Consider it yours, you can do whatever you want with it. And we can get anything you need, and you’re probably gonna need some tools and… fertilizer? I don’t know anything about plants.” He laughs, a little forced, but the sentiment is there. “Well, I know how to cook them, and I’m getting even better now that I have someone to cook for.”</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t look up, but his expression relaxes and he huffs softly through his nose.</p>
<p>“So, if you want books,” Steve continues, “We should probably go and check out what the library has. I have a card, Sam made me get one when I first moved here. They’re bound to have a way bigger selection than a bookstore, and then if you find something really useful, we can just buy it so you don’t have to keep renewing it.”</p>
<p>Bucky tilts his head up, looking out the window himself. His face is open, now, and relaxed, ready for the library or a garden or something, or maybe just ready. Steve grins, he can’t help himself. “But after lunch?” Bucky asks.</p>
<p>“Oh yeah, definitely.” Steve stands up and heads towards the kitchen. “How do you feel about grilled cheese and tomato soup?”</p>
<p>“Pretty good,” Bucky says. “I feel pretty good.”</p><hr/>
<p>The library is a ten-minute walk away. Bucky has hardly been out of the house in the four weeks since he’s arrived, although he sometimes accompanies Steve to the bakery around the corner or one of the numerous little cafés in the neighborhood. Only for coffee, though, to take home in a paper cup; Steve always asks if he wants to stay and have something to eat, but Bucky out of the house is a shy and skittish thing, always leaning toward the door of the coffee shop like he’s about to bolt, so they take their coffee to go.</p>
<p>He does okay on the walk to the library, though, probably helped by the fact that their neighborhood on a Friday at half past one is mostly deserted. He’s got on sunglasses and one of Steve’s ballcaps pulled down low over his eyes and his hands are shoved in the pockets of the bomber he took without asking off of the hooks in the hall as they were walking out the door. He doesn’t seem to see a distinction between his stuff and Steve’s stuff, and it makes Steve feel strangely melty inside, a pool of wax puddling round the base of a candlewick. He never actually catches Bucky pulling things out of his laundry basket or off the shelves in his closet, but he almost always seems to be wearing at least one thing that belongs to Steve, seems to prefer, in fact, Steve’s slept-in clothes from the laundry basket to his own new, clean, neatly-folded things.</p>
<p>But that’s a thought to stuff way down in the recesses of his mind, something to be ambushed by another day. For now, they’re walking to the library, and it’s one of those gorgeous winter afternoons that’s brilliantly sunny and dry and cold enough to burn the inside of his nose. When someone approaches them on the sidewalk, Bucky presses into Steve’s side, and Steve thinks idly about just passing the library by and walking all the way to Queens. When they get to the gates, though, Steve says, “Here we are,” and holds the door open for Bucky.</p>
<p>They end up spending a few hours in the library. It’s a quiet space smelling like old books and paste and libraries immemorial, not many patrons at this time of day, and Bucky seems to feel safe in the stacks. He finds the section with the gardening books and starts to pull things off of the shelves. Steve hangs around for a few minutes and then says, “I’m going to be over in the fiction, is that okay? It’s right over there, just say my name if you need me, I’ll hear you.” Bucky nods, not looking up, but thirty seconds later, as Steve is pulling another Culture novel off the shelf, he sidles up with his hands shoved in his pockets again, looking around, seemingly nonchalant.</p>
<p>“Find what you want?” Steve asks, though he knows that he hasn’t. Bucky shrugs noncommittally and conjures up some interest in the paint box of colorful spines on the new-fiction shelf, but it’s been four weeks and Steve can read him a tiny bit easier now. “Give me a minute to pick out a few things and I can come with you,” he says, and Bucky gives him a terse nod, bending his head down so that his hair falls from under the ballcap in a thick curtain, hiding his face from sight.</p>
<p>In the end, they get so many books that both of their arms are full on the way home. Bucky finds half a dozen gardening books that look promising, and Steve picks up a whole stack of new science fiction. On their way to check out, they stumble across the comics anthologies, and between the two of them, they pick out another dozen books. The librarian at the check-out desk looks gratified and a little surprised but puts them all on Steve’s card without comment.</p>
<p>It has clouded over when they leave the library and a stiff breeze has picked up, whistling up Bedford Avenue and straight down the collar of Steve’s coat. Neither of them are wearing scarves; they had been tricked by the morning sun into thinking that it was warm enough to go without. Steve glances over at Bucky as they’re walking and sees his mouth set in a thin line, his pale cheeks chapped red under the short scruff of his three-day beard. "I’ll turn the heat up when we get back,” Steve says, as if to remind himself, and is gratified when Bucky brightens perceptibly.</p>
<p>When they get home, he fiddles with the radiators and then makes hot chocolate and opens a box of biscotti from the bakery. Bucky takes his stack of books up to his bedroom, but then, to Steve’s delight, he comes back downstairs again with one clutched in his hand. They spend the rest of the evening on the couch, Bucky half-supine on the chaise longue with a random volume of <em>The Complete Peanuts</em> and Steve with his feet up on the coffee table, paging through <em>Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons,</em> the warm, dim room filled with the smell of chocolate and cinnamon and a comfortable, happy silence.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. February</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve is standing on the deck looking over the garden on a cold, overcast day. It’s drizzling, and there’s a fog hanging over the end of the yard, obscuring the greenhouse and the tree. Everything in the backyard is grey and spongy-looking, droplets of water clinging to every surface, and the diffuse light makes it impossible to tell what time of day it is. All of a sudden, he hears a whimpering sound, faint and directionless, and he knows, without knowing how he knows, that it’s a dog, a puppy, and it’s hurt. He feels compelled to find it.</p><p>He walks down the stairs and makes his way to the end of the yard, waving his hands in front of his face in an attempt to dispel the fog that pushes in fat curls around his head, but it doesn’t work. He walks and walks; the yard seems to be far longer than he remembers. <em>I should be past New York Avenue by now</em>, he thinks<em>.</em></p><p>Abruptly, a hole opens up in the ground at his feet. It’s a well, the lip flush with the brown winter grass surrounding it and lined with stones as far down as he can see. The whimpering sound is coming from the bottom of the well, and he crouches down and says, “It’s okay, buddy, don’t be scared, I’m gonna get you out. Don’t you worry.” He get on his knees and extends his hand down into the hole, and then he’s falling, and then he jerks awake gasping for breath.</p><p>At first, he’s still in the dream, he still hears the whimper echoing at the bottom of the well, but as he clutches the soft sheets in his fists and feels the beads of sweat cooling on his forehead, he realizes that he’s awake, in bed, at home. The whimpering is coming from across the hall.</p><p>He rolls over and turns on the bedside lamp, shielding his eyes from the glare as he stumbles out of bed and crosses the hall. He has a moment of indecision; should he knock? Should he just go in? What if he wakes Bucky up and he gets angry? What if Bucky’s hurt and he needs help?</p><p>He knocks, very softly.</p><p>
  <em>Knock knock knock.</em>
</p><p>Nothing happens, except that the whimpering turns into a groan, like an animal in pain, and then a quiet sob. Steve panics and knocks harder.</p><p>
  <em>Knock knock knock.</em>
</p><p>There’s a gasp, and then it’s quiet inside the bedroom. A moment passes, and then Bucky whispers, his voice like sandpaper rasping against the silence, “Steve?”</p><p>“Yeah, Bucky, it’s me, can I come in?”</p><p>There’s another pause, a long one, and then, “Okay.” Steve opens the door and steps inside. The moon is almost full, and he can see, in the light spilling through the slit in the curtains, Bucky lying under his quilt, curled on his side, facing the window. Standing at the foot of the bed, Steve can only see the top of his head over the mound his shoulder makes under the covers, his hair strewn wildly across the pillow like a handful of seaweed. He doesn’t move, and he doesn’t speak.</p><p>“Nightmare?” Steve whispers. A nod. “Think you can get back to sleep?” A shrug. He looks awfully small curled up in a ball under the covers. Steve thinks, suddenly, inexplicably, of a documentary he watched about baby animals; not the cute ones, roly-poly and finding their feet, but the new ones, sticky and helpless, eyes still glued shut. Struggling to survive.</p><p>“Do you want me to stay for a while?” There’s a long, long pause and he’s starting to think that Bucky may have fallen asleep again when he says, “Okay.”</p><p>Steve pulls the chair from the corner of the room up to the head of the bed and sits down. He slouches in the chair a bit and stretches his legs out, propping his feet on the side of the bed, right below where Bucky has his own feet tucked up under his thighs. Bucky’s eyes are closed and he doesn’t move, but Steve listens to his breathing. In, out. In, out. He matches his own breathing to the rhythm, a habit from when they were kids that’s easy to fall back into, and gradually slows it down, breathing easier now that he knows Bucky is okay. Bucky seems to follow his lead, and eventually, he’s breathing so deeply and slowly that Steve is sure he’s asleep. He gets up, as silently as his own moon-cast shadow, and pads back across the hall. He leaves both of their bedroom doors cracked.</p>
<hr/><p>One morning at the end of the first week of February, Steve comes back from his run to find an overstuffed padded shipping envelope half-stuffed through the mail slot in the front door. He pulls it out and examines the label. It’s addressed to one Grant Stevens, but he’s pretty sure it’s not his.</p><p>When Bucky comes downstairs a few minutes later, clean-smelling from the shower with his hair damp and wearing his sweatpants with the ankle zippers and one of Steve’s shirts—last night’s sleep shirt, Steve notes absently—he picks up the envelope from the dining table and says, simply, “My seeds.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s great,” says Steve. “What are you gonna do with ‘em?”</p><p>Bucky cocks an eyebrow at him, a new impish expression on his face that he seems to be trying out lately, and says, “Plant them?” Steve can hear the unspoken <em>idiot</em> at the end.</p><p>Steve tries to match his expression, but can’t help the grin that cracks his face in two. “I meant, could you show me what you want to do with the backyard? I assumed that’s what they were for, not for feeding the birds.”</p><p>“Okay.” Bucky looks pleased, darting his eyes up to meet Steve’s through the long fringe of his hair. He goes upstairs while Steve pours himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen and sits down at the dining table. Bucky comes back down with the yellow legal pad and <em>Rodale’s Organic Gardening</em> from the library and then pulls out the chair next to Steve and sits down.</p><p>The first page of the legal pad is covered in handwritten lists, but Steve can’t get a look at them before Bucky flips to the next page and pushes the pad between them. He’s carefully sketched out a map of the backyard, the way it looks now, with a square at the top labeled ‘greenhouse’ and another at the bottom labeled ‘deck’. Everything in the backyard has been measured, including the spread of the tree in the back corner, and the dimensions annotated in a small, careful hand, the letters squared off, the i’s undotted.</p><p>It’s not Bucky’s handwriting, Steve realizes with a jolt; he remembers exactly what Bucky’s handwriting looked like, and it was joyful and curlicued, like a page full of ringlets. But in the next second, he pushes that thought into the overstuffed closet where he files all the other things he wants to avoid thinking about at the moment. He recognizes that the closet is overstuffed and in danger of bursting, but he’ll examine it later, he tells himself, when he’s alone. <em>Steve…</em> he hears Dr. Castaño say in his head, but he waves her away with the back of his hand like he would swat at a persistent fly.</p><p>He looks at the map again, noting how carefully and precisely it was made. “Where’d you find a measuring tape?” he asks. “I didn’t think we had one. I’ve been meaning to buy some tools, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”</p><p>Bucky frowns. “No measuring tape,” he says. “I did it by eye.”</p><p>Steve gapes, looking back and forth between Bucky’s worried face and the paper. “But this is so precise!” He glances down at the map and points to a number at random. “Can you really just look at this section of wall between the deck and the greenhouse and know that it’s seven point one four meters long?”</p><p>Bucky looks down at his hands clasped together on the table. “It was part of my training. As the Asset.” He’s clenching and unclenching his hands and his voice is pitched so low that it’s almost a whisper, but he doesn’t sound too upset, so Steve waits patiently.</p><p>“I can accurately gauge distance up to three point five kilometers from a fixed point if I have an unobstructed view. And lengths down to one millimeter.” Steve can’t see Bucky’s face because his hair has cascaded down around it, but he sounds hesitant, as if he knows the word <em>Asset</em> is going to make Steve angry. Like he’s a child who thinks he’s about to be hit.</p><p>Again, Steve feels that familiar rage at all the nameless, faceless people who ever raised a hand to Bucky, like a little geyser of anger rising in his chest, something that impels him to take up his shield and stalk out the door and smite someone, anyone. But instead, he breathes deep and then says, “Wow, that’s so cool, Buck! That’s a real hell of a talent to have. I wish I could do that.” Bucky tucks his hair behind his ear with his human hand and Steve can see his face now, still looking down at the table, but a little surprised and a little pink.</p><p>Steve thinks for a beat, and then laughs. “Wait, can you do leveling, too? You know, like the tool with the bubble in it?”</p><p>Bucky looks thoughtful. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”</p><p>“Well, if you can, between your eye and that hammer you call an arm,”—Steve reaches over and taps Bucky’s metal hand—“I won’t have to buy any tools after all.”</p><p>Bucky’s hand metal hand twitches subtly, but Steve notices. But Bucky just looks at him out of the corner of his eye and gives his one-sided smile, then reaches over and flips to the next page on the legal pad. This page has the same drawing, but this time the empty area of the backyard has been filled up with lots of boxes, all more or less the same size, each with a minuscule label. Bucky says, “These are the beds where I’m going to plant everything.” He taps the library book. “This says that you have to rotate the crops every year, so next year I’ll move them around.” Steve’s heart, physically strong but impulsively weak, thrills at the phrase <em>next year</em>. But then Bucky continues, tapping the three beds closest to the greenhouse, “This is tomatoes. I’m going to plant a lot of tomatoes.”</p><p>Steve closes his eyes and thinks about the piles of red and yellow and green-striped sun-warmed tomatoes at the farmer’s market in July and makes a noise in the back of his throat, half-groan, half-moan. Bucky huffs out a little laugh, just half a chuckle, but it’s the first Steve has heard since he got Bucky back. Giddy with the thought of fresh tomatoes and that summer-bright, deep-throated <em>hah-hmm </em>laugh, he tips over and bumps their shoulders together. Bucky leans into the contact for an all-too-brief moment and then straightens up and points to the map again. “I think this is a fruit tree, but I don’t know what kind.”</p><p>Steve shakes his head a little to clear all the half-formed thoughts buzzing around and tries to picture the gnarled tree in the back corner of the garden, its thick, squat trunk and its crooked branches. “It’s definitely not a sapling, it must have been planted here a long time ago. If the people who owned this house kept it around that long, it must have given good fruit, right? I wonder if it’s apples? Or cherries? Or”—Steve gasps—“or <em>peaches</em>.”</p><p>“Well,” says Bucky, “it might be possible to have a peach tree in Brooklyn, but I don’t know how well it’d do. I bet it’s apples.”</p><p>“<em>Peaches</em>,” Steve whispers, and, on cue, his stomach growls ferociously.</p><p>“Elevenses,” Bucky says, and nods decisively, then scoots his chair back and stands up. He leans over slightly toward Steve and pretends to sniff him. “You stink. Go take a shower. I’ll make the peanut butter toast.”</p><p>Steve’s jaw drops, just a little, as he stares at Bucky’s hands tidying the legal pad and sliding it into the back cover of the book. This is the first time that Bucky has offered to do something. Sure, he puts his dirty dishes in the dishwasher and makes his bed every day, but up until now, he has held himself in reserve, like an overnight guest. <em>He’s starting to feel at home</em>, Steve thinks, and he’s grateful that Bucky’s already in the kitchen and can’t see his face. He pushes his own chair back, floats though the living room and up the stairs, grinning madly to himself all the way.</p>
<hr/><p>“How did you sleep?”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>This is so obviously a lie, and he wonders why Bucky even bothers. The house is well built, with thick, sturdy walls, but Steve has enhanced hearing, and it’s impossible to miss the whimpers, the crying, or the panicked thrashing that wakes him up in the middle of the night. It’s not every night, but it seems to be happening more and more frequently, and the last few nights have been particularly rough. When he wakes up, he staggers out of bed and knocks on Bucky’s door. Sometimes Bucky wakes up immediately, sometimes it takes a few rounds of knocking. Then Steve pulls the chair over, sits down, and waits with his feet propped up until Bucky falls asleep again.</p><p>Last night he hadn’t woken up at all, but this morning, Bucky looks haggard, sunken into himself, his gaze unfocused and the circles under his eyes darker than ever. So when Steve finishes making breakfast and sits down at Bucky’s right with two plates of eggs Benedict with homemade hollandaise and avocado, he says, “Hey, your nightmares are really bad.” Bucky looks up, but he doesn’t meet Steve’s eye. Instead, he looks over his left shoulder, through the window that opens onto the garden, the sky as dark and grey and uninviting as a February sky can be. <em>Oh, it’s one of those days</em>, thinks Steve. He feels like he can judge Bucky’s emotional state by how close he gets to looking Steve straight in the eye.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says.</p><p>“And I think they’re getting worse.” Steve spears an egg with his knife and the creamy yellow yolk mingles with the hollandaise on his plate.</p><p>“No, they’re not.” Bucky looks down at his own plate and gently squishes his yolk with the back of his fork.</p><p>“What, really?” says Steve, surprised. “But I hear you every time you have one, or at least I think I do, and every night they seem a little bit scarier and you’re a little bit, well, louder.”</p><p>Bucky squishes his yolk again and looks thoughtful. “I think…” he says, and trails off. Steve takes a bite of his toast and waits. “I spent a long time… being quiet. Lying low. And I think my…” he pauses again.</p><p>Steve feels a little tremble run through him, though he’s not exactly sure why. He knows, rationally, that it’s difficult for him to hear Bucky talk about the past because of his anger issues. And because of his guilt. <em>Your misplaced sense of guilt, </em>his internal Dr. Castaño corrects him. But he doesn’t understand why such simple statements like “I spent a long time being quiet” make him feel like he’s being pulled apart in four directions at once.</p><p>“I think my training kept me from having any screaming nightmares that might call attention. And then there was SHIELD, and I didn’t feel good there, either. And now, I guess…” Bucky trails off again. He picks up his knife in his metal hand and slices deftly through his toast. “Maybe I feel safe enough. To finally let it out.”</p><p>“Oh.” It’s all Steve can get out. He feels like he’s going to choke on the lump in his throat and he takes a swig of coffee to push it back down. He’s feeling about fifteen different emotions at once; he can’t think properly; he feels like he’s being strangled by his amygdala. He needs… he needs to punch something. Yes, that’s it, what he needs are the punching bags that Tony made specially for him, in the Avengers training gym.</p><p>He doesn’t know what to say and all he can think about is doing violence to inanimate objects, so he scarfs the last of his eggs and runs upstairs to change out of his pajamas and put on his workout clothes. If he takes the bike, he can be in Manhattan in no time at all, spend a few hours punching the shit out of his feelings, and be back home before lunch. <em>Maybe call Dr. Castaño in the afternoon</em>, that annoying little voice inside his head says.</p><p>When he comes back downstairs, he sticks his head into the kitchen to look for his water bottle and sees Bucky still sitting at the table, his breakfast untouched on his plate, staring down at his lap with his head cradled in both hands. All of a sudden, Steve feels the hard slap of remorse for having left him sitting there with that confession hanging in the uncleared air, and something else, warm and soft in his innermost parts. It feels suspiciously like tenderness.</p><p>He practically teleports to Bucky’s side, first putting a hand on his shoulder, and then crouching down next to his chair and squeezing his knee.</p><p>“Bucky, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to just clam up and run away.”</p><p>Bucky keeps staring at the yolk congealed like a blob of yellow paint on his plate, his hands bracketing the sides of his face. His eyes are red, but dry.</p><p>“Bucky, can you look at me? Please look at me. I…” Steve hesitates, trying to figure out what to say next, as if that’s a strategy that has ever worked for him in the past. “I don’t handle my emotions very well, I never did.” He laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “I know you don’t remember much from when we were kids. Together, before. But I’ve always punched my feelings away. And when you told me that, about your nightmares, that’s all I could think about. About how I wanted to hurt something. How I want to hurt the people who hurt you.”</p><p>Bucky looks at him, a quick glance and then away. He moves his fingers though his hair, causing more of it to fall around his face, casting him further in shadow.</p><p>“But, you know, Hydra, that’s Avengers business, I can’t just go out and single-handedly kill every person who ever touched you.” Bucky meets his eyes again, and this time he doesn’t look away. “And we, I mean, the Avengers, we’re on it. But I still need to punch something, so I’m gonna go to the Tower and knock the shit out of these special bags that Tony made for me at the gym.”</p><p>He stands up and puts his hand back on Bucky’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze.</p><p>“They’re really nice punching bags and I hardly ever destroy one. You know, if you ever feel like you want to come, it’d be great to have the company. The gym is huge, we’ve got anything you could possibly want, and there’s a shooting range and a rock-climbing wall and an obstacle course and…” he realizes he’s talking too much. He also realizes that his hand is still on Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky is sitting up in his chair now and leaning into the touch, his head tilted over so that the ragged tips of his hair brush Steve’s knuckles.</p><p>Steve feels that overflowing rush of tenderness again and says, quickly, in order to avoid second-guessing himself, “Can I give you a hug?”</p><p>Bucky freezes, not breathing. <em>Oh shit</em>, thinks Steve, <em>I’ve gone and fucked it up</em>. “Sorry, I mean, no pressure, you don’t have to, I just thought it might make you feel better, but don’t worry about it, I’ll just go now… need to hurry… all the way to Manhattan…” his voice trails off. He wants to pinch himself, or run away, or find an open manhole cover and fall right in like Wile E. Coyote and disappear forever.</p><p>But then Bucky scoots his chair back from the table and stands up, turning around and stepping right into Steve’s space. He doesn’t make any other movement, but stands there, clearly waiting for Steve to get on with it.</p><p>Steve takes a deep breath and wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and pulls them closer together. Bucky holds himself stiffly, his arms at his sides, but when Steve rubs between his shoulder blades with his hand he relaxes a little and brings his human hand up to rest, light as a feather, at the middle of Steve’s back. Steve squeezes him just a little bit tighter and after a minute Bucky slowly lays his head down on Steve’s shoulder. His nose is stuck right in the crook of Steve’s neck and Steve can feel the hot <em>whuff</em> of his breath, in and out, in and out. After another minute he inhales deeply, his ribs expanding under Steve’s hands, and heaves a huge sigh.</p><p>Suddenly Steve doesn’t want to go punch things anymore; all of the feelings of rage and distress have been replaced by that warm, soft tenderness and a kind of giggly, carbonated happiness. It feels amazing to hug someone. He never hugs people in the future. <em>I miss touching</em>, his hidden mind supplies once more, unbidden. And then, <em>It’s almost like being home again, </em>and all of a sudden he’s right on the verge of crying.</p><p>For years, home had been on the other side of an uncrossable divide, in time, if not in space, and his memories of home and the feelings that come tied to the word, like a note tied to a rock thrown through a window, are all mixed up in his mind with being small and sick and poor but fiercely happy and never alone. Never alone.</p><p>But he knows they can’t stand there hugging for the rest of the day, so he gives the threatening tears time to disappear and then pushes away, hands on both of Bucky’s biceps. Bucky is looking down to where their toes are almost touching, but his face is open and relaxed.</p><p>“Alright, buddy,” says Steve. “I’ll be back before lunch. There’s plenty of stuff in the fridge for elevenses. Okay?” He gives Bucky’s biceps a squeeze, both the human one and the metal one under the sleeve of the green hoodie.</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says, and smiles, still looking at their feet, both sides of his mouth quirking up. It’s the biggest smile Steve’s seen from him so far, so for Bucky, it’s practically beaming. Steve leaves him standing by the table, grabs his bottle of water from the kitchen, and almost skips out of the house.</p>
<hr/><p>When he gets back, Bucky is sitting slouched in the armchair, his legs over one of its arms, reading another gardening book from the library. He’s changed out of his pajamas and is wearing a pair of black jeans and a grey t-shirt with the NASA logo on it under a dark blue cardigan. He looks up when Steve walks in and gives him a small wave with his metal fingers, then goes back to his book. The black mood from that morning seems to have dissipated, and Bucky looks relaxed and even, as he kicks one of his bare feet up and down, halfway to cheerful.</p><p>Steve looks at his clothes again and recognizes, with no surprise, the NASA shirt as the one he’d slept in last night, and the jeans as having been in a pile on the floor of his closet for the last few days. He walks across the living room to stand next to the armchair and reaches out to pluck at the sleeve of Bucky’s cardigan.</p><p>“Can I ask you something?” he says, making sure that the pitch of his voice is amused, not neutral. Bucky looks up at him and tucks his hair behind his ears. “I know you have a closet full of clean clothes, so why do you like to wear stuff that’s been sitting in my laundry basket?”</p><p>He had expected denial or the embarrassment of being caught out, but instead, Bucky chooses to pick up on his amusement, much to Steve’s relief. He looks at him and with a sarcastic twist to his mouth says, “In the laundry basket? No. Balled up on the floor. Abandoned. Practically fossilized.” He plucks at the front of the shirt and pulls it away from his chest. “Look at these wrinkles.”</p><p>Steve can’t believe his ears. Bucky is giving him shit, actually ragging on him about his mess. It’s so familiar that he bursts out laughing, far more laughter than the joke actually warrants. Bucky gives him the both-sides smile again and looks down at his book.</p><p>Steve thinks that maybe he can push his luck a little more. “No, really, though, why do you want to wear my stuff? Is there something wrong with your own clothes? I thought we were more or less the same size, and Natasha picked them out. But we can go out and get you something else if you don’t like what she got you, no problem.”</p><p>Bucky’s still looking at his book, but his ears have turned an interesting shade of pink. “No, they’re fine. It’s. Uh,” he pauses. “It’s ‘cause they smell like you.” The last part of this statement comes out as a whisper.</p><p>“Oh!” Steve is caught off guard, a little like when Natasha sneaks up on him in training melees. “Okay.” He’s at a loss. He’d expected Bucky to say something about how they were broken in, or how they’d had all the itchy tags cut off. But that they smell… like him? He feels his own face radiating heat and he knows he’s blushing. Thank god Bucky’s shaken his hair out to cover his own face, because he doesn’t think he could stand to look him in the eye right now.</p><p>“Well, I guess, if you want, we can…” he trails off because Bucky freezes, holding his breath. <em>Jesus, what is even going on here</em>, Steve thinks to himself, his brain going <em>eeeeeee</em> like a mosquito. <em>Think fast, idiot</em>. “Uh, we can work out a system,” he blurts out. “When I change into my pajamas, I’ll fold the day’s clothes up nice and neat”—here, Bucky snorts—“and drape them <em>nicely</em> and <em>neatly</em>,” Steve emphasizes the words and Bucky shakes his head, swinging his silky hair back and forth, “over the back of the chair in the corner of my room.”</p><p>“Riiiiight,” says Bucky, drawing the word out. “Crumpled up on the floor by your bed?”</p><p>“No,” Steve says severely, happy to be back in the familiar territory of defending himself against reputation besmirchers. “At the very least, folded nicely and neatly inside the laundry basket. And then in the morning you can come and get them at your leisure.”</p><p>Bucky tilts his head, looks Steve directly in the eye, and holds his gaze. His lashes are long and dark, and his eyes are silvery-blue, like the underside of an aspen leaf. “Thanks,” he says, simply.</p><p>Steve feels like he can’t draw a breath when Bucky doesn’t look away. “I… uh… I draw the line at workout clothes, though. Don’t want you walking around the house smelling like the business end of a sewer.” Bucky finally looks back down at his book with a smile and Steve feels so giddy that he laughs at his own terribly unfunny joke and goes into the kitchen to start rummaging around for lunch.</p>
<hr/><p>Things change, little by little. Bucky still has nightmares almost every night, but now Steve walks across the hall and sits beside the bed and rests his hand on Bucky’s arm, or slips his hand under the duvet and circles his ankle with his fingers. It only takes Bucky a few minutes to go back to sleep.</p><p>One night, it’s Steve’s turn to wake up in a cold sweat, gasping and choking on the ghost of a sob. When the cobwebs clear out of his eyes, he sees Bucky standing at the foot of his bed, shifting back and forth on his feet and wringing his hands. Steve can’t make out his face; he’s framed from behind by the light from the hall streaming in through the half-open door.</p><p>“Steve.” It comes out as a cracked whisper; he clears his throat and continues, “You were yelling.”</p><p>Steve drops his head back down onto his sweat-damp pillow and looks at the ceiling. “I was dreaming,” he says, and stops. Bucky waits; he’s no longer restless on his feet, but Steve can hear the whisper of his calloused thumb as it rubs a circle around the back of his metal hand.</p><p>“I was dreaming about the plane. The <em>Valkyrie</em>. But you were the one going down, and I was the one who was crying on the other end of the radio.”</p><p>The imagery of the dream is fading, almost gone, but the feelings are still vivid in his mind: knife-sharp agony, overwhelming grief, an annihilating sort of helplessness. He feels a tear roll down his cheek, wonders idly if it’s visible in the light from the hallway, and then sniffs, not caring whether Bucky can tell that he’s crying or not. <em>Don’t bottle your emotions up</em>, Dr. Castaño is always telling him. <em>Ok, fine</em>, he thinks.</p><p>Bucky takes a tentative step toward the head of the bed, his hands still clutching each other tight, like he’s not sure what they’ll do if he lets them loose. “It’s okay,” he says, his voice steady but worried. “I’m here.”</p><p>“Yeah, you are,” Steve says, almost wonderingly. Bucky takes another step closer and pulls a crumpled Kleenex out of the pocket of his pajama pants and holds it out so that Steve can take it.</p><p>“I’m staying with you,” he says decisively, and doesn’t wait for Steve to say anything before he walks back around the foot of the bed to the corner of the room and dumps the clothes on the chair onto the floor under the window. Then he picks the chair up and walks it back around to where Steve has rolled over and is now curled up on his side.</p><p>He sits down in the chair and tucks his feet up under him, then says, “Stick your foot out so I can reach your ankle.”</p><p>Steve just looks at him for a second, wonder and affection and gratitude and the last pang of grief all mixed together in his chest. Then he says, “Would you…” and turns his face away, a little embarrassed. “Would you hold my hand instead?”</p><p>“Sure.” Bucky scoots the chair a little closer and slips his human hand under the duvet and into Steve’s own. Because they’re facing each other, it’s not like holding hands, exactly, it’s more like a handshake. Their palms are together, and Steve’s fingers are tucked up into the warm sleeve of Bucky’s hoodie. Bucky circles the heel of Steve’s palm with his thumb and pinkie and gently strokes the soft, thin skin of Steve’s wrist with his other three fingers, right over his pulse.</p><p>Whether it’s the come-down from his dream or the touch of another person, Steve doesn’t know, but he falls back asleep within minutes and doesn’t wake up again until the morning sun is reflected into his bedroom by the windows of the house across the street. The empty chair is still sitting beside the head of the bed and he feels strangely clean, the comforting void of a dreamless sleep like a pool of cold water through which he has broken into the bright light of a new day.</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later, after lunch, Bucky finally opens his package from the seed company and spreads all of the little paper packets out on the table. Steve walks into the dining room as he’s arranging them into piles and stands behind his chair. “What’s the next step?” he asks.</p><p>“I’m sorting them by when they need to be started.” Bucky holds up a packet. “This is a pumpkin that needs to be started three indoors weeks before the last frost. So… May 1st.” He picks two more packets. “Carrots and peas. Carrots go straight in the ground after the last frost. The peas I can start whenever the beds are finished.”</p><p>Steve stares at him, his mouth hanging open a little, feeling a little bamboozled. “Did you learn all that from those library books?”</p><p>Bucky nods and smiles with both sides of his mouth. “Plus, the seed packets come with instructions printed on the side. Even you could figure it out.” Steve bursts out laughing. The more flippant Bucky becomes, the more Steve realizes how much he’d missed his smart mouth.</p><p>“I need some supplies, though. Trays and some dirt. And then wood to build the beds and more dirt. And a hose and tools and stuff. But for right now, just trays and a bag of dirt.”</p><p>“Can’t we just go down to the park with a shovel and fill up a bag ourselves?” asks Steve, only half in jest. “My ma would kill me if she knew I was thinking about paying good money for a bag of dirt.”</p><p>Bucky gasps, pretending to be shocked. “That’s not dirt, that’s dog shit. I can’t grow vegetables in that. I need…” here, he pauses, forefinger in the air, thinking hard like he can’t remember the word he wants. “Oh yes, I need <em>artisanal</em> dirt,” he finishes, with a satisfied nod.</p><p>Steve laughs so hard he doubles over, clutching his chest, and has to cling to the back of Bucky’s chair for balance, gasping for breath. Bucky just smiles like a cat in a puddle of sun and goes back to sorting his seed packets.</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning after breakfast, Steve googles “nurseries Flatbush” and finds a garden center a twenty-minute walk from their house. They tidy up the kitchen and head upstairs together to get dressed. Bucky follows Steve into his bedroom without comment and opens the closet door, looking for the things that Steve had been wearing around the house yesterday. Steve clears his throat, grinning, and points to the clothes, folded neatly, sitting on the back of the chair in the corner of his room. Bucky rolls his eyes picks them up, laying the t-shirt and hoodie to one side and tossing the khakis past Steve and into the laundry basket.</p><p>“What,” says Steve, “You’re not too good for my dirty clothes, but you draw the line at khakis?”</p><p>Bucky rolls his eyes again. “We don’t gotta dress like we’re a hundred years old. I like my pants, you know,” he gestures vaguely at his midsection with his metal hand, “tight. It’s the twenty-first century. Maybe you should think about it, too,” he says, giving Steve a withering look.</p><p>“Get out of my bedroom,” Steve growls, and crowds Bucky out the door. When he turns back to the closet, though, he picks out the tightest jeans he has, a pair that Natasha forced him to buy and which he never, ever wears. He thinks he might start, though. They’re a little uncomfortable, but they do cling in all the right places.</p>
<hr/><p>The day is windy and cold, the sky a flat grey that looks like a funeral shroud hanging over the city. They’re both bundled up, Bucky wearing a grey cashmere scarf, a slouchy black beanie, and the sapphire blue peacoat that Steve had bought for himself the previous winter because it reminded him of Bucky’s old blue coat. He had actually, in a fit of lonely daydreaming, considered asking the Smithsonian for the loan of the coat and finding someone who could custom-make him a copy, but the daydream shriveled up and died when he thought of all the hoops he would have to jump through, not to mention the inevitable speculation that would be invited by such a request and how bittersweet it would be to wear.</p><p>Now, he’s glad he’d bought the sapphire peacoat. Whereas it’s tight across his shoulders and loose at his waist, as are almost all of his clothes, it looks like it was made bespoke for Bucky. In the jacket and beanie, with his long legs in his tight black jeans and his black combat boots, he looks like a model fresh from the catwalk. They stop at the bodega for snacks on the way out, and Chus, the woman behind the counter, calls him <em>guapísimo</em> and tells him that the color makes his eyes look like <em>dos agujeros en el cielo</em>, whatever that means. Steve doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish, but Bucky must because his cheeks turn pink behind his short beard and he gives Chus a small, but friendly, smile.</p><p>Steve himself is wearing the black bomber that they trade back and forth and a green and blue hat with a pompom that Clint had knit for him in the fall. It was a surprise, finding out that Clint was a knitter, but after a little consideration, Steve supposed it made sense. Making something soft and useful with things that are inherently weaponizable by dint of being sharp, pointy sticks. Maybe they should all give it a try. <em>Ask Dr. Castaño about it</em>, he adds to his mental to-do list, which consists of mostly of items starting <em>Ask Dr. Castaño about… </em>with a few things like <em>Buy soy sauce </em>thrown in.</p><p>The garden center has some evergreens in big pots and a few bare trees hanging on in the winter wind, but aside from some hardy perennials, the wooden plant tables are bare. They open the door to the shop at the right of the gate, and a wind chime jingles softly above their heads.</p><p>Directly across from the door is a counter, behind which sits a woman in her 60s with a halo of short, curly grey hair. She’s wearing a pair of reading glasses with a beaded cord that goes around her neck and paging through a book the size of a dictionary. She gives them a short, appraising look over the top of her glasses when they come in the door and says, “Lemme know if you need help,” then goes back to her reading.</p><p>The shop is small, but there are shelves lining all of the walls and one long shelf that runs down the center of the space, dividing it into two aisles. The shelves are filled to bursting with gardening implements, gloves, opaque plastic bottles with different plants on the labels, garden decorations, some books, trays with small compartments filled with seed packets, and other things that Steve can’t identify. Bucky turns to the left and walks down the first aisle, Steve following behind. At the end, Steve stops and picks up a small, jolly-looking garden gnome from a display of ceramic figures and nudges Bucky’s shoulder to get his attention. He grins, but Bucky just gives him a flat look and says, “Steve, no.” Steve laughs softly and puts the gnome back.</p><p>Steve has no idea what ninety-five percent of the things in this shop are for, but Bucky seems to know what he’s looking at, and he hands Steve things to hold: a yellow trowel, a spray bottle, a small bag of white plastic sticks, a stack of black plastic rectangles divided into cells. Near the counter they walk past the gloves, and Steve reaches out to pick up a pair. “Don’t you need some of these?”</p><p>Bucky scoffs. “It’s just dirt.”</p><p>“Yeah,” says Steve, “but what about your metal hand? It’s gonna be hard to clean dirt out of all those cracks.”</p><p>Bucky quirks an eyebrow and whispers, “It’s built for combat, you think Hydra didn’t think of that?” He turns around so that his back is towards the woman sitting at the counter, takes off his glove, and pushes the sleeve of his peacoat up his forearm. He flexes his fingers, just a little, not enough to make a fist, and all of the plates on his hand open at once with a soft <em>zzzzing</em>. They’re all inclined at an angle, like fan blades, and Steve can see the delicate wiring and other mysterious components that are usually hidden. It’s the first time that Bucky’s drawn Steve’s attention to his metal arm, and Steve feels a passing urge to grab it and take a closer look, maybe under a magnifying glass, but he just says, “You look like a cat that’s fluffed itself up to look scarier.”</p><p>Bucky smirks, another expression that he’s been trying out. Then he glances up at Steve and smiles. “If I vibrate my arm at the right frequency, the dirt falls right out.”</p><p>“That’s handy,” says Steve with a shit-eating grin, and then laughs out loud when Bucky narrows his eyes.</p><p>They walk back to the front of the store and Steve sets their things down on the counter. “Is that everything?” the woman asks, and Steve glances at Bucky, waiting for him to speak, but Bucky just stares back at him impassively. <em>Ah</em>, thinks Steve. <em>Still not ready to do the talking</em>.</p><p>“We’re gonna need some dirt too, ma’am,” he says, with his best Captain America smile.</p><p>The woman gestures out the door and to the right, “There’s another little building next door. That’s got the potting soil and the houseplants. Just pick up what you need and bring it back here.” She gives them both an up-and-down look over her glasses. “I’d tell you to get a trolley because the bags of potting soil can be kind of heavy. But something tells me you don’t need one.”</p><p>“No ma’am, thank you ma’am,” Steve says, and they go back outside.</p><p>When they push open the door next door, a humid blast of warm air hits them in the face. It smells like a jungle, like rich dirt and chlorophyll, but with overtones of something sweet and fragrant. Immediately to the right of the door there’s a hanging basket holding a plant with long, green tendrils and hundreds of small, star-shaped white flowers. Steve sticks his nose in the plant and breathes in deeply. It smells incredible, like a beautiful woman wearing the world’s most expensive perfume, like all of the earth’s flowers distilled into one essence, like heaven.</p><p>“Bucky,” he gasps. “Smell this.”</p><p>Bucky does the same thing as Steve, and his eyes grow wide. “Steve. We have to have it.”</p><p>Steve unhooks the basket and takes it down. While they wander around the room looking at the other plants, he brings the plant up to his nose to sniff it again and again. Who knew that something that smelled like this existed? And that you could grow it in a pot?</p><p>In the end, Bucky decides that he only needs one bag of dirt, so he takes the plant from Steve and lets Steve carry the bag back outside and through the other door. The wind chime jingles, and, out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Bucky reach up and run his gloved fingers though the bars to make them chime again.</p><p>When the woman at the counter sees Bucky with the hanging basket, she gives them a happy, knowing smile. “You made a good choice,” she says. “That’s gonna make your house smell like heaven all winter long.”</p><p>“What is it?” asks Steve, leaning over toward Bucky so that he can smell it again.</p><p>“That’s jasmine, and if you take care of it, it’ll bloom like this every winter. Do you have a south-facing window?”</p><p>Steve shakes his head. “No ma’am, just east and west.”</p><p>“Alright, a couple of things, then.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Put it in your east-facing window. Keep the soil damp, but not soggy. And as soon as it gets warm enough, set it outside. In the summer it’ll want about four hours of sun a day. And you should repot it in the spring.”</p><p>“Yes ma’am,” says Steve. “Thanks for the advice.”</p><p>“Oh, and one more thing,” she says. “Don’t call me ma’am. My name is Cerise.”</p><p>She smiles at them warmly, and Steve says, “I’m Steve.” He pauses for half a second. “This is James.”</p><p>Cerise rings up their purchases. At the last minute, Steve says, “Wait, wait, do you have any more of those?” and points over his shoulder to the wind chimes.</p><p>Cerise frowns. “I’m afraid not, we sold out around Christmas and I haven’t ordered replacements yet. But check back in a couple weeks, I’m sure I’ll have them back in stock by then.”</p><p>Steve pays for their purchases and Cerise puts the smaller things in a big paper bag. They say goodbye and walk home through the cold, Steve carrying the dirt and the paper bag, Bucky carrying the jasmine high in his arms so that it sits right under his chin. Every half a block or so he leans over, bumping shoulders with Steve, so that Steve can sniff it, too.</p>
<hr/><p>Last week’s hug seems to have opened the floodgates, because all of a sudden, they’re touching each other again like they used to when they were kids. A hand on a shoulder, a playful shove, an elbow to the ribs. Bucky pokes Steve in the chest when he’s making a point, Steve ruffles Bucky’s hair when he passes by the couch. And now it’s getting late, they’ve watched a movie, and it’s time to go to bed. Bucky locks the door and plods upstairs while Steve goes into the kitchen to start the dishwasher and turn off the under-cabinet lights. When he gets to the top of the stairs, Bucky’s standing in front of his bedroom door, arms crossed and looking tense.</p><p>“What’s up?” Steve asks, immediately concerned.</p><p>Bucky shifts from foot to foot, looking at the floor, at the ceiling, at Steve’s feet, not meeting Steve’s eyes. “Um,” he says, and twists his hands together. “Can you hug me again?”</p><p>Steve laughs, full of relief and that now-familiar bubbling happiness, but Bucky’s still frowning. “Yeah, of course, c’mere.” He steps forward with no hesitation and wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders. This time, Bucky wraps his human arm tighter around Steve’s back, but he still leaves his metal arm hanging at his side.</p><p>“You know,” Steve says softly, “You can hug me with the other arm, too. It doesn’t bother me.”</p><p>“It’s weird,” Bucky says, plaintively, leaving his arm at his side.</p><p>“No, it’s not,” Steve reassures him. “It only took me a week or so to get used to it when you came home with me. It’s different, sure, but it’s not weird. It’s you.”</p><p>Bucky huffs into the crook of Steve’s neck, but he brings his metal hand up and rests it softly on the small of Steve’s back. It’s not as cold though his t-shirt as Steve thought it would be, but he has to suppress a shiver, anyway.</p><p>They stand like that for a minute, just holding on, until Steve breaks the silence and says, “How much do you remember from when we were kids? Before the war?”</p><p>He’s surprised and gratified that Bucky doesn’t immediately freeze, but it does take him a minute to answer. “Not much. I remember more than I did when I broke… broke away. And things keep coming back all the time. But it’s mostly just flashes, pictures, not complete memories.”</p><p>Steve’s chewing on his bottom lip and thinking about what to say next when Bucky goes on, “I remember feelings better than images. Don’t think they could burn the feelings out of me as easy. Maybe they’re stuck in another part of my brain.” This is new territory, and Steve feels, for some reason, like they’re on the brink of something momentous. He tightens his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, drawing them closer together. “My sisters,” Bucky continues. “I felt so protective of them. I would’ve killed anybody who touched them. But they were annoying, too.”</p><p>Steve laughs softly. “Yeah, Becca, especially, was always sticking her nose in our business.”</p><p>He can feel Bucky smile against his neck. “And my ma, she made me feel safe, and proud. Sometimes I can hear her voice, but it’s the very edge of a memory, I can’t see anything else.” Steve can feel the tell-tale prickle in his eyes. He had loved Winifred Barnes almost as much as he loved his own ma and it breaks his heart just a little bit more to think that Bucky can’t remember her face.</p><p>Bucky moves his metal arm unconsciously up to Steve’s shoulder and strokes absently down his back. “And you, I remember you. Happiness, anger, excitement. Fun. Worry, exasperation? A lot of exasperation.” Steve can feel him frowning into his neck. “Why did you make me so exasperated? Maybe those memories will come back later, but maybe you’ll just have to tell me so I can remember them again.”</p><p>“Hell no,” Steve chokes out around the unshed tears in his throat. “I’m not telling you why I was so exasperating. You’ll just have to find out for yourself. I promise I haven’t changed that much. I regularly drive the other Avengers to drink.”</p><p>Bucky actually laughs at this, a small laugh, but a real one, and it feels like Olympic gold to Steve. He still hasn’t let go, and Steve is not about to be the first to give up.</p><p>“Thanks for hugging me, Stevie,” Bucky says quietly.</p><p>
  <em>Stevie?</em>
</p><p>He has to clear his throat for a full ten seconds before he can speak. “Ah jeez, Bucky, you don’t have to thank me. I’ll hug you any time you want.” He pauses. “You know, you were a really touchy-feely kid. I was always smaller than you, and you kinda treated me like a pet, sometimes. You’d grab my arm and drag me off to look at something or to move me from one side of the couch to the other. And after my ma died and you decided that I couldn’t be trusted to live alone, you moved into the apartment with me and we shared the one bed until you shipped off to Europe.” He takes a deep breath. “I really missed being in close quarters with somebody. It’s nice to be able to hug you again.”</p><p>“Jesus, have you always been this sappy?” Bucky says. Steve laughs, a little wildly, and Bucky continues, “Well, pal, it’s been swell but we’ve been doing this for the last five minutes and I have to piss.”</p><p>Steve gives Bucky an extra strong squeeze and lets go, steps back with his palms raised. “I admit it, you’ve got my number, I am and have always been a sap. If you want more hugs, you’d better get used to it. Comes with the territory.”</p><p>Bucky gives him a smile, but there’s an edge to it that Steve can’t interpret. Then he steps into the bathroom and closes the door.</p>
<hr/><p>On February 21st, Bucky spreads newspapers all over the dining room table and sets his garden supplies out.</p><p>“Whatcha doin’?” Steve asks, sitting up on the couch so that he can peer over the back.</p><p>“Planting seeds. It’s ten weeks until last frost, so I need to get started with”—Bucky squints at the packets in his hands—“with onions, celery, bergamot, oregano and sage.”</p><p>“Wow,” says Steve. “Are you really going to plant onions, though? They’re the cheapest things at the market.”</p><p>Bucky shoots him a disdainful look from under his brows. “Yes, Steve. It’s the principal of the thing.”</p><p>“Okay, okay,” Steve says, grinning. “Just so you know that with the rate we go through onions, you could plant the whole yard full and we’d eat them all within a month.”</p><p>Steve lies back down on the couch and opens his book again while Bucky rustles around in the dining room. He can hear him filling each cell in the seed trays with a handful of potting soil from the bag at his feet. Then everything is quiet, with only the noises of Steve turning pages and Bucky moving things softly around on the table to break the silence. All of a sudden, so quietly that it’s almost imperceptible, Bucky starts to hum. Steve freezes, hardly daring to breathe, thanking his lucky stars that he’s hidden behind the back of the couch and that Bucky seems to have forgotten that he’s there.</p><p>He blinks against the prickling of his eyes. The simple domesticity of the moment feels like a knife tearing through the veil of time that separates him from the days when he and Bucky used to live together, before. In spite of all of the things that have happened to them, both together and separate, and the many decades that have passed, here they are again, back in Brooklyn. In a warm house with the fading afternoon sunlight slanting sharply through the living room windows, Steve reading and Bucky puttering around, humming. His nose is starting to run and he feels the overwhelming urge to just give in and weep. He bites his lip until it hurts, trying to concentrate on something other than the feeling of his heart being crushed in his chest.</p><p>Bucky stops humming and says, “I guess that does it.” Steve can hear him brushing the loose dirt back into the bag with his metal hand. Then there’s the <em>wssh-wssh</em> of the spray bottle and a rustle and tap as he folds up the newspapers. Steve wipes his nose on his sleeve and scrubs at his face with his hand, hoping he’s not too obvious. Bucky comes into the living room dusting his hands, pushing Steve’s feet out of the way so that he can sit down on the chaise longue. Steve lets him get settled and then wiggles his toes in their woolen socks under Bucky’s thigh. “You have such a nice voice, Buck,” he says.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I mean, you were just humming, but it was nice.”</p><p>Bucky looks confused. “Was I humming?”</p><p>“Yeah, you were, while you were working. I think you forgot I was here.”</p><p>Bucky narrows his eyes, consulting the record of his memory. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know what song that was. I didn’t even know I remembered any songs.” He turns to face Steve. “Did you recognize the song?”</p><p>“Honestly,” says Steve, “I was thinking about something else, I wasn’t paying that close attention. Can you hum it again?”</p><p>Bucky, endearingly, looks a little embarrassed, but starts humming again from the beginning. It sounds like a folk song, with a lilting melody that runs up and down the range of Bucky’s voice. Steve almost recognizes it, it’s on the tip of his tongue, hiding out on the edge of his consciousness like a ghost seen out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>“I know it, I know I do, but I can’t grab it.” He makes a grasping motion in the air with his hand. “But I know how to catch it. I just have to stop thinking about it.” He scoots back down on the couch so that his knees are bent and works his toes in his a little further under Bucky’s thigh. He opens his book again and starts to read, trying to concentrate on the words in order to lure the name of the song out into the open.</p><p>Two paragraphs later, it comes to him. “It’s 'The Golden Vanity,'” he says, softly, his voice full of wonder. “It was a folk song my ma used to sing to me, usually when I was sick in bed. She’d put a wet cloth on my forehead and rub my arms and sing 'The Golden Vanity.'” Oh god, he’s going to start crying again if he doesn’t get ahold of himself.</p><p>Bucky must hear the strain in his voice because he circles Steve’s ankle with his hand and squeezes. “How did I learn it, then?”</p><p>“You were always there, too, you practically lived at my house when we were kids, you know. When I was sick and my ma had to go to work, you’d sit on the bed and force me to eat soup and read out loud to me.”</p><p>Steve rubs his eyes. He’s not bawling, but he’s not <em>not</em> crying, either. He drops his book on the floor and puts an arm over his face. He feels Bucky shift over to one side, pull Steve’s feet out from under his thigh, and resettle them in his lap. He puts both hands on Steve’s ankles, not moving, just resting, a heavy, reassuring weight. “Tell me about it?” he says softly.</p><p>“I just… I really miss my ma all of a sudden.” Bucky strokes his shins, once, and then they sit in silence for a few minutes until Steve starts to breathe easier and the hard lump in his throat slowly melts away. They stay like that for a while, Steve with his arm crooked over his face, Bucky looking out the window with his hands on Steve’s legs. Eventually Steve peeks out from under his arm at Bucky’s profile, soft and golden with the reflection of the last of the dying light.</p><p>“I’m glad you remembered 'The Golden Vanity,'” he says softly. “And you do have a lovely voice. Maybe you should learn some more songs, it can get awfully quiet around here sometimes. It’d be nice to have a little music in the house.”</p><p>Bucky smiles, a real smile that makes wrinkles around his eyes. “Okay, Steve. Sure. I can do that. Maybe I’ll remember something else, too.”</p><p>“You always were wild about music,” Steve says. He starts giggling. “And, oh god, you knew so many dirty songs, I mean really filthy stuff that would’ve scandalized a sailor. If you remember those, we’re in real trouble.” They’re both laughing now.</p><p>“Well,” Bucky says, grinning wickedly, “if none of them come back to me, I’m sure I can find something comparable on the internet.”</p><p>Steve puts a hand over his heart and rolls his eyes to heaven. “God bless the internet,” he intones solemnly.</p><p>“God bless the internet,” Bucky repeats, and squeezes Steve’s ankles in his hands.</p>
<hr/><p>The goodnight hugs become a regular thing. Whoever gets upstairs first waits in front of their bedroom for the other one to finish sweeping under the table or locking the door. One night, when Steve comes upstairs and sees Bucky waiting for him, he says, “Ready for your debriefing?” They both laugh, but that’s the only thing they call it from then on out.</p><p>And there’s a lot of truth in it; it’s easier to talk about difficult things if they don’t have to look each other in the face, and at the same time, the physical contact brings with it a sense of closeness and safety that makes it easier to open up. Bucky asks Steve to tell him stories about when they were kids, and Steve asks Bucky about the time he spent on the run between his last, failed mission on the helicarriers and the day he showed up at the Tower, ready to turn himself in.</p><p>This is how Steve learns that Bucky has a duffel bag with a couple million dollars in stolen Hydra cash buried somewhere in Central Park, and <em>he can’t remember where</em>. Steve laughs hysterically at the idea of some chipmunk finding the bag and shredding the money inside to make a nest, while Bucky digs his fingers into Steve’s ribs and growls menacingly, “It’s not funny! It’s all I got in the world! How am I supposed to pay your dowry <em>now??</em>”</p><p>Eventually Steve falls to the floor, weak with laughter, while Bucky pretends to kick him in the kidneys. Steve catches his ankle and pulls his feet out from under him, and Bucky prat-falls on top of him, metal elbow in his stomach and his human hand grinding the side of Steve’s face into the rucked-up hallway rug. Finally, they’re both lying on their backs, panting, looking up at the hall light while Steve picks lint out of his stubble.</p><p>“Can you believe…” Bucky starts, still trying to catch his breath.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Can you believe we’re almost a hundred years old?”</p><p>It’s a joke about their childish scuffling, he knows, but it hits Steve right in the solar plexus. “Yeah,” he breathes out, unbelievingly. “Wow.”</p><p>After another moment, he turns his head and looks at Bucky in profile, the perfectly straight nose, the aristocratic forehead, the surprisingly sweet chin with its dimple like the thumbprint of God. “Can you believe we’ve known each other for almost a hundred years?”</p><p>Bucky turns his head, looks straight back at Steve with a half-smile. The angle of the light casts his eyes in shadow; they look bigger than normal and darker, like two chips of wet slate under the soft fringe of his eyelashes. “Yeah,” he says, and the half-smile turns into something bigger and far more brilliant. “Yeah, I can.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The version of "The Golden Vanity" that Bucky hums is <a href="https://youtu.be/uO3IFgRgIKo">this one</a> sung by Pete Seeger (don't @ me about my chronological inconsistencies)</p><p><em>guapísimo</em> = gorgeous<br/><em>dos agujeros en el cielo</em> = two holes in the sky (this turn of phrase is courtesy of a little old lady I met once in Cáceres)<br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. March</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When the phone rings, Steve is in the studio with a marked-up canvas on the big easel and little smears of paint in five shades of brown squeezed onto his palette and a brush in his hand and a head that is completely empty, like the inside of a deflated party balloon.</p><p>He had been planning for a while to get back into painting and had asked Bucky to sit for him in the garden one sunny afternoon, between the greenhouse and the apple tree, his back to the tall, dark-stained privacy fence. He’d complied, a little bemused at first and then laughing when Steve had passed him a half-sprouted bare-root daffodil bulb to hold in his metal hand.</p><p>“Why… why are we doing this?” he’d asked, his brows drawn up and together in that sweetly confused look that Steve secretly found incredibly endearing.</p><p>“Because I need to get back to painting, and you’re the only one around who can sit for me.” That wasn’t exactly the reason, but it was good enough for the moment. He stepped back around the easel that he’d brought downstairs and adjusted the canvas, then lunged to steady it when the whole contraption wobbled. It wasn’t his good easel, and the ground in the backyard was spongy and soft after a whole winter’s worth of rain, but it would have to do. “Don’t move,” he said, to Bucky and the easel both.</p><p>Bucky obligingly did not move, but stared straight at Steve, the uncertainty plain on his honest face. “But don’t you want to paint something prettier? Like the park? Or the beach?”</p><p>“Aww, Buck,” Steve said, his pencil gliding lightly over the linen, “are you saying you’re not pretty?”</p><p>“I…” Bucky started, and then huffed in frustration. “Shut up.”</p><p>“No,” Steve said, looking back and forth between Bucky and the canvas, “you shut up. Your job is just to sit there and hold still while I block all this out. If you stop talking, it’ll only take fifteen minutes and then we can go back inside where it’s warm.”</p><p>He could see the muscle jumping in Bucky’s jaw as he clenched his teeth, but he sat still with the daffodil bulb cupped carefully in the palm of his hand, glaring at Steve through narrowed eyes. Eventually, he forgot to be irritated and just looked at Steve instead, and Steve was strangely glad for the pencil and the canvas and the easel to hide behind and the excuse not to meet his eyes.</p><p>Now, Steve is standing in the studio, having forgotten, somehow, everything he knows about technique, when the phone rings in his back pocket. He sets the palette and paintbrush down on the little art-supply cart that’s sitting next to the easel and wipes his left hand off on a rag, then gingerly pulls the phone out and thumbs it open without even looking at the caller ID.</p><p>“Hello?”</p><p>“Hey, Steve, remember me?”</p><p>“Sam!” Steve says, excited to hear his warm and familiar voice.</p><p>“Steve!” Sam parrots back, laughing. “Long time no talk.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, grimacing in the empty room, the sudden rush of guilt like a bucket of water upended over his head. “Sorry I’ve kind of fallen out of touch. I’ve been really distracted.”</p><p>“Mm-hmm?” Sam says, and it’s at once a question and a soft accusation.</p><p>“Yeah… I… yeah.” Steve picks the brush up again and scoops up a dab of burnt sienna, swiping it down the outside of the faint line that delineates Bucky’s cheek, “I could have found five minutes to call, though.”</p><p>“You could have,” Sam says noncommittally.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Sam,” Steve says, hoping that Sam can hear the sincerity in his voice. “Really, you’ve been such a great friend to me. I mean, the whole time I was looking for him, you were there for me any time I needed you, and now that I’ve got him… I’m sorry for not being a better friend in return. The friend you deserve.”</p><p>“You know you don’t owe me anything, Steve. I’d do it all again,” Sam says.</p><p>“Yeah, but still. Thanks.”</p><p>There’s a short pause while they both feel their feelings on opposite ends of the line, and then Sam continues, the grin back in his voice, “So, I didn’t call just to make you feel bad.”</p><p>“But it was one of the things on your to-do list?” Steve asks, adding a little more paint to the canvas.</p><p>“Oh, absolutely.” They both laugh, and just like that, they’re back on track.</p><p>“So, how are things down in DC?” He blends the burnt sienna together with a dab of a darker shade and swipes it down the right side of the canvas where the fence is cast into shadow by the greenhouse, tracing the delicate curve of Bucky’s ear.</p><p>“Pretty good. My sister and her kids are coming down to visit for spring break, so I’m a little busy trying to get the house ready and figure out things to do to entertain them.”</p><p>“Ooh, that’s… one heck of a spring break you’ve got planned.” Steve sets his brush in a paint-spattered jar on the cart and walks over to the window. He looks out at the backyard; the fence is a darker shade of brown than he remembers, less burnt sienna and more raw umber, and there’s more green in the grass, too. It is March 1st, after all. Colors are his biggest problem; having gone so many years with such a limited selection of rods and cones, he still finds it hard, now, to fix the shades and nuances of color in his mind.</p><p>“Yeahhhh,” Sam says, drawing the word out. “They’re good kids. I’m just glad they’re only gonna be here for a week. At least I get to take the week off work.”</p><p>“Look at you, Sammy, having yourself a spring break like you’re still in college or something.”</p><p>“Uh huh, just like college, with two kids under six in tow.”</p><p>Steve can picture Sam right now, probably sitting in his dim little office in the VA, leaning back in his desk chair and chewing on the end of a pencil. “So, what else is new?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Uh-uh, Steve, I called to ask about you. What’s new with you?”</p><p>“Oh, nothing much. Same old, same old. You know.” Steve rummages around in his paint box and pulls out a few tubes, then takes them back over to the window and holds them up to the light.</p><p>“I don’t know, actually, considering we haven’t talked in a month.”</p><p>Steve bursts out laughing, although he still feels the little residual twinge of guilt. “C’mon, Sam, you already crossed ‘Make Steve feel bad’ off your list.”</p><p>Sam is cackling on the other end of the line, but he gets himself under control and says, “No, really, though, how’s he doing?”</p><p>“Great, just… just great.” Steve drops the tubes of paint on the windowsill so that he can gesture freely with his paint-splattered hand. “He’s not gregarious, but he interacts a lot, spends most of the day out of his room, now. We get out of the house most days and he’s getting a lot more comfortable with it. He still has nightmares, but they’re getting better. And he lets me hug him.”</p><p>“Wow, that’s… really great, actually.” Sam sounds genuinely impressed. “I wasn’t expecting him to be so far along this quickly. It’s really good to hear that he’s doing so well.”</p><p>“Oh, and he’s going to plant a garden.” Steve gestures to the backyard, as if Sam can see him over the phone. “Flowers and vegetables and everything. We bought a bunch of seeds and stuff the other day.”</p><p>They talk for another five minutes about the garden, how Sam recommends gardening to some of his guys because of its therapeutic value, how Sam’s work is going, and Steve is about to ask him when he’s coming up to New York to visit when there’s a soft knock on the door.</p><p>“Steve?” Bucky opens the door halfway, looking hesitant, obviously aware that he’s interrupting something. “I made potato soup for lunch, are you going to be ready to eat soon?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah, I’m talking to Sam, just give me a minute and I’ll be down.” Bucky gives him a half-smile and then slips back out the door, closing it silently behind him.</p><p>“I should go, it’s almost lunchtime and Bucky made soup.”</p><p>“Damn, Steve,” Sam says, “you’re living the high life. You take in a reformed assassin and next thing you know you got a cook and a gardener and a…”</p><p>“Fuck off,” Steve says, laughing again. He’d forgotten how much fun Sam could be. <em>I really have to call him more often</em>, he thinks<em>. I really need to be a better friend.</em></p><p>“I think I read a manga like this, once,” Sam continues, almost to himself.</p><p>“Hey, I gotta go, but come visit soon, okay?” Steve dips his paintbrush into the little tin of linseed oil on the cart and makes a mental note to come back up later and actually clean up properly.</p><p>“Sure, definitely in the summer, maybe sooner if I can swing it,” Sam says. “Bye, Steve.”</p><p>“Bye, Sammy.” Steve ends the call, slips his phone back into his pocket, wipes his right hand on the rag, and goes downstairs for lunch.</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later, Steve comes back from his run to find Bucky sitting at the dining room table eating a bowl of cereal and reading a book, already dressed. He usually doesn’t get out of his sleep clothes until it’s absolutely necessary, sometimes staying in them right round the clock, so Steve is surprised to see him in a pair of jeans and a nicer hoodie, not one of the shapeless ones with frayed cuffs that are reserved for pajamas.</p><p>“You look spiffy, got a date?”</p><p>Bucky gives him a glare that’s eerily reminiscent of what Natasha calls her <em>bitch, please </em>look.</p><p>“No, Steven, but I’ve got some errands to run.”</p><p>“Oh,” Steve says, a little surprised. He’s usually the one who thinks about errands. “Okay, just lemme get a shower and grab some breakfast and I’ll be good to go. Maybe 30 minutes?”</p><p>Bucky looks down at the table, a little flash of uncertainty in his eyes. “Actually, I was thinking maybe I could go by myself?”</p><p>Steve can’t suppress the look of shock that flashes across his face, but thankfully, Bucky is still looking down at his cereal bowl. “Oh! Okay, sure. I think that’s a great idea, actually.”</p><p>Bucky’s head jerks up and he looks at Steve, eyes wide and startled. “<em>Really?</em>”</p><p>“Yeah, of course. You’ve left the house plenty in the last two months, but never alone. This is definitely the next step and I think you’re ready for it.” Bucky looks pleased. “Where are you thinking about going?” Bucky had already set out a bowl and spoon for him on the table, so he plops down in his chair and pours out half the box of corn pops and drowns them in milk.</p><p>“Well, we need milk,”—he gestures to the small lake that fills Steve’s bowl to the brim—“so I’ll stop by the bodega, and the bakery for bread, and I also need some more potting soil, so I think I might go to the nursery to pick some up.” He looks a little hesitant, a line of worry appearing between his eyebrows. “Do you think that’s too far away?”</p><p>Steve wants to tell him yes, to take baby steps, stick to the bodega, come home straightaway, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, but he also knows that part of the process is letting Bucky come to his own conclusions about how far he’s comfortable going.</p><p>So he says, “I dunno. But it’s not like you have to go right this minute. If you get down to Church Avenue and decide you can’t go any further, well, you turn around and come back and then this afternoon I’ll take you to the nursery on the bike.”</p><p>Bucky looks thoughtful and nods slowly, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that he could just make a plan and then only do half of it.</p><p>“Have you talked to Dr. Zaidi about it?”</p><p>Bucky rolls his eyes. “Yeah, duh. She said that it was high time I did something without you holding my hand the whole way.”</p><p>Steve snorts. “She absolutely did not say that,” he says. “But just so you know, I’ll hold your hand any time you want.”</p><p>Bucky makes a little uninterpretable hum and looks down at the table again, absently stirring the last three soggy corn pops around the puddle of milk in the bottom of his bowl.</p><p>Steve chews his mouthful of cereal and then says, “Do you have money?”</p><p>“I was just gonna take your whole wallet, actually.”</p><p>Steve waves his hand magnanimously. “Have at it. Now, the only other thing is that you don’t have a phone yet, so if you get into trouble or something, you won’t be able to call me.”</p><p>“C’mon, Steve,” Bucky says with an exaggerated shrug. “You left the house every day in the 1930s without a cellphone, and according to you, you <em>definitely</em> got into trouble. I always turned up before the bad guys did any permanent damage, right?”</p><p>Steve automatically rubs the bridge of his nose, thrice broken and permanently a little crooked.</p><p>“So, just do what I did,” Bucky continues with a shrug. “But don’t follow me, that would be a step too far. Just use your, I dunno, superhuman Bucky-sense or whatever.”</p><p>“Sure, you stink so bad that I could follow your trail all the way to Crown Heights, easy,” Steve says, and ducks as a balled-up napkin flies past his face.</p>
<hr/><p>Later, when Bucky leaves, Steve is upstairs in his bedroom getting dressed. He doesn’t mean to spy, but he just happens to be standing by the window when he sees Bucky come out the front door and freeze on the bottom step, shoulders turtled up around his ears. He’s got a ballcap pulled down over his eyes and Steve can’t see his face, but he can tell from the rapid rise and fall of his chest that he’s panicking, just a little bit.</p><p>He stands there watching for another minute before he decides to go see if there’s something he can do. He pulls on the sweater that he’d been crushing in his fist and walks out the bedroom door, forcing himself to go slowly, no running, no taking the stairs in one bound. But when he gets downstairs and opens the front door, the sidewalk is empty.</p><p>The next half hour is the longest half hour of Steve’s life. He sits down on the couch, opens the laptop, closes the laptop, gets out his sketchbook and draws one random line that he immediately erases, fluffs the throw pillows, pulls some books off his bookshelf at random. He’s standing by the bookshelf, staring out the window, when he realizes that the book he’s paging through is upside down. <em>Christ almighty, man, get a grip</em>.</p><p>The Dr. Castaño who lives in his head says, <em>Why not channel that nervous energy into something useful?</em> So when Bucky comes back twenty-five minutes later, Steve is in the kitchen wearing an apron and cleaning the grout on the backsplash with an old toothbrush.</p><p>When he hears the door open, he speedwalks into the hall and asks, breathlessly, “How was it?” Bucky, for his part, also looks breathless and ruffled and a little excited. He toes off his sneakers and crowds into Steve’s space. He looks like he’s going to give Steve a hug, but with a loaf of bread in his human hand and two gallons of milk dangling from the metal one, he can’t quite pull it off. Steve himself is wearing rubber gloves covered in grout cleaner, so they stand there looking at each other for a few seconds before Bucky turns away and walks around him into the kitchen.</p><p>“I realized as soon as I got outside that it was a little ambitious, thinking I was gonna get all the way to the nursery on my first solo trip.” He shrugs ruefully. “So I concentrated on the bakery and the bodega.”</p><p>Steve pulls his gloves off and takes the milk to put in the fridge while Bucky opens the pantry door to put the bread away. “Good call, I think you were right. Later we can go on the bike and get your potting soil.”</p><p>“Nah, I think I wanna try again by myself tomorrow. I’ll do better if I have just one thing to accomplish.” He closes the pantry door and turns around, dusting his hands off.</p><p>“Everything else was fine?” Steve asks, picking up his toothbrush again.</p><p>“Yeah, Marisa at the bakery knew exactly what I wanted, I hardly had to talk at all.” He gives Steve a strange, sly little look out of the corner of his eye. “And Chus at the bodega asked me where my novio was.”</p><p>Steve cocks an eyebrow, an unspoken question.</p><p>“You don’t speak any Spanish, do you, Steve?”</p><p>Steve shrugs. “Not a lick.”</p><p>Bucky turns away with a smile. “Nada de nada, okay.”</p>
<hr/><p>The next day isn’t a terribly bad day, exactly, but it’s not a good one, either. Bucky doesn’t get up for breakfast, so Steve gets worried and goes upstairs to knock on his door. He hears a muffled noise from inside, and when he opens the door, he sees that Bucky is still in bed, curled in on himself, invisible under the covers. The curtains are closed. Steve walks around the foot of the bed and sits down next to Bucky’s feet.</p><p>“Doin’ ok?”</p><p> “I dunno,” comes the muffled reply.</p><p>Steve gropes around until he finds an ankle and squeezes it through the covers. “You haven’t had a stay-in-bed-all-day kinda day for a while. Maybe yesterday was a little too overwhelming.”</p><p>“Probably. It’s ridiculous, though. That something good makes me feel bad.”</p><p>“It’s not ridiculous, you know that. You know that yesterday was something big and new, and it was good, but it was also really stressful. Your brain has to process all that somehow.”</p><p>Bucky hums doubtfully.</p><p>Steve squeezes his ankle again and says, “I guess it’s like a computer, you know? You only have a certain amount of processing power, so if you’re running a really big program, everything else is gonna go real slow.”</p><p>“Wow, look at you, using all those big technology words, talking about the future,” Bucky says from under the duvet.</p><p>There’s a little sarcastic bite to it, but Steve just brushes it off. “Anyway, it’s not ridiculous. You can’t blame the computer for not having more processing power than it was built with.”</p><p>“That’s rich, coming from you, you threaten your laptop with bodily harm all the time ‘cause it’s going too slow.” Bucky sounds annoyed, but he’s pulled the covers down to his neck and is glaring at Steve, now.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah.” Steve waves his hand loftily. “You want some breakfast? I made oatmeal on the stove. And then we can spend the rest of the day watching Netflix, if you want. Or maybe you could call Dr. Zaidi.”</p><p>Bucky sniffs and pulls the covers back over his head. “Whatever.” He sounds better than he did before, though. Less flat. More human.</p><p>Steve is back in a few minutes with the laptop and a bowl of oatmeal with maple syrup and diced apple on the top. He sets the laptop on the bed and the bowl on the bedside table and goes into his own bedroom, reappearing a minute later with two more pillows.</p><p>“C’mon, pal, sit up,” he says, but Bucky stays horizontal, only his metal fingers visible where he’s holding the covers tight around the top of his head.</p><p>“Seriously, Buck, I’ll pin you down and spoon-feed you breakfast if I have to. But then your bed’s gonna get messy, so if I were you, I’d just cooperate.”</p><p>Bucky pulls the covers down to his neck again and glares like he’s trying to set Steve’s hair on fire.</p><p>“That’s better,” Steve says with a grin. “Now sit up so I can put another pillow behind you. Don’t want you to get a crick in your neck.”</p><p>Bucky sits up and the covers slip down to his waist. Steve puts one of the other pillows behind his back and props them up on the headboard. Bucky leans back against them, then takes the strings of his hoodie and, in one smooth movement, pulls them tight so that the hood closes around his face, leaving nothing sticking out but the tip of his nose.</p><p>“Bucky,” Steve says, fighting a losing battle against laughter, “don’t try me. I’ll spoon feed you oatmeal through your nostrils.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t say anything. He crosses his arms and sticks his hands in his armpits. Steve sighs. “Okay. I get it. It’s a bad day. I’m gonna go make more coffee, and then we’ll watch something. Or if you don’t want to watch something, I’ll get my sketchbook. Or if you want to call Dr. Zaidi, I’ll go somewhere else. Or even if you just want to be alone. You let me know.” He pats Bucky’s head through the hood and goes downstairs.</p><p>When he comes back up with the promised cups of coffee, the bowl of oatmeal is empty and Bucky is horizontal under the covers again. Steve sets one cup of coffee on each bedside table. “How about a <em>Batman</em> marathon?” He kicks off his house shoes and slips under the covers, rearranging the pillows behind him. He pulls up Netflix and finds the 1989 <em>Batman </em>and nudges Bucky’s thigh with his toes before he presses play. “Lemme know if you want me to leave or if you need anything else.”</p><p>After a while, Bucky scoots over and presses his back up against Steve’s leg. When the movie is over, Steve takes the empty bowl and the cold coffee downstairs and makes them both a fresh cup. When he gets back, Bucky is sitting up in bed with <em>Batman Returns </em>queued up.</p><p>They spend all day in Bucky’s room, watching Batman movies. Steve pauses <em>Batman Returns</em> halfway through to make sandwiches for lunch and brings them up on a tray. For dinner, they get Thai takeout and eat it straight from the paper containers. They make it to the end of <em>Batman &amp; Robin</em> before Bucky starts to yawn.</p><p>“I’m tired,” he mumbles. “I’m gonna go to sleep.” He scoots back down under the covers.</p><p>“Okay, pal.” Even though it’s only nine o’clock, it’s late enough for Steve to consider it a success. “I dunno about you, but I think that was a pretty good bad day.” He strokes Bucky’s head through the hood again, collects the laptop and the empty takeout containers stacked on the bedside tables, and turns the light off as he leaves the room.</p>
<hr/><p>On the second Tuesday in March, Steve gets up earlier than usual and goes for his run. When he comes back, there’s no sign of life from Bucky’s room, so he skips his shower and heads into the kitchen to start making breakfast. The bacon is sizzling in its pan, the milk, eggs, and melted butter are mixed together, and he’s rooting through the silverware drawer for the half-cup measure when he hears Bucky’s soft footsteps coming down the stairs.</p><p>“Jesus, you’re up early.”</p><p>Steve turns around and looks at Bucky standing in the doorway, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles. He’s got on Steve’s favorite sleeping hoodie and the red plaid pajama pants that they trade back and forth, and his hair has been pulled up into a messy bun on the crown of his head. <em>Adorable</em>, Steve thinks. He can feel his mouth turn up in a soft smile, before he shakes himself and blinks a few times. <em>Where did that come from?</em></p><p>Bucky’s not paying him any attention, but he clears his throat and schools his expression anyway. “Yep,” he says, as Bucky shuffles over to the counter and pours coffee into the mug that Steve had left out for him. “I’ve got big plans. Today is a special day.”</p><p>Bucky just shoots him a look, tops the mug up with milk, and yawns in Steve’s face like an insouciant lion. “Uh huh,” he says. “Is it.”</p><p>Steve, in the meantime, has found the half-cup measure and is dumping flour into a cereal bowl. “Sure is, and I bet you have no idea what day it is, do you.” He adds the baking soda and a pinch of salt, and pulls a whisk out of the utensil jar.</p><p>“’Course I do, it’s March 10th,” says Bucky. He takes a long pull from his coffee and heaves a sigh of satisfaction.</p><p>Steve dumps the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl with the eggs, butter and milk and gives the whole thing a few good turns with the whisk. Then he unhooks the cast-iron griddle from the pot rack and sets it across the front two burners, moving the pan of bacon to a cold burner in the back. “Yeahhhh…” he says, drawing the word out, fishing for the answer that he’s pretty sure is not going to come. “And what’s special about March 10th?”</p><p>“Fuck if I know, Steve,” Bucky grumbles. “Stop teasing, it’s too early.” He leans back against the counter next to the stove and takes another pull of his coffee. “What’s so special about today, then? Is it the eighty-fifth anniversary of the day your balls finally dropped?”</p><p>Steve kicks out with the side of his foot, intending to catch Bucky in the knee and make him spill his coffee, but he swerves out of the way, much quicker on the draw than he should be for this time of day.</p><p>“Okay, asshole,” Steve says. “I’m not gonna tell you, then. You’re just gonna have to figure it out. Now go sit down and wait for your bacon pancakes.”</p><p>Bucky perks up. “Bacon what now? You mean bacon <em>and</em> pancakes or <em>bacon pancakes</em>, together?”</p><p>“I mean, this is something Sam taught me to make when I was staying with him in DC and I’m making it now because it’s a special day, like I told your silly ass already, so you can just sit down and shut your mouth or I’m gonna eat them all myself and give you dry toast for breakfast.”</p><p>Bucky snickers into his coffee, but he goes into the dining room and sits down at the head of the table where he can watch Steve moving around in the kitchen.</p><p>The griddle is hot already and starting to smoke, so Steve rubs the stick of butter all over it. As it spits and crackles and begins to brown, he takes slices of bacon from the pan on the back of the stove, pats them dry with a paper towel, and breaks them into pieces, dropping the pieces in little groups up and down the griddle. Then he scoops out pancake batter and pours it on top of the little piles of bacon.</p><p>He’s standing over the griddle with a spatula when sharp metal fingers jab him in the ribs. He whirls around and swats at Bucky with the spatula and, this time, catches him on the neck.</p><p>“I thought I told you to stay put.”</p><p>“I need more coffee,” Bucky says, rubbing his neck and waving his mug around in the other hand. “And I figured it out. Is this your de-icing day?”</p><p>“No, jeez, that was in April. And anyway, why would I celebrate that?”</p><p>Bucky pours coffee from the carafe into his mug and reaches for the milk. “I dunno, it seems like something good to celebrate, I mean, that you’re not dead and you’re in the future.”</p><p>Steve doesn’t even think before he says, “No way, that was the beginning of the worst time of my whole life. Well, the <em>second</em> worst.” He flips the pancakes over and gets two plates out of the cupboard.</p><p>When he turns around, Bucky’s looking at him with narrowed eyes and his chin stuck out defiantly. “What’s so bad about it? Alive and living in the future? Sounds amazing.”</p><p><em>Shit</em>, thinks Steve. <em>Why did I say that?</em> He doesn’t want to talk about this, not here, not today. He scoops up the pancakes with the spatula, dividing them between the two plates. “I don’t really wanna talk about it, alright? Can you get the syrup from the fridge? I’m gonna put these on the table and then I’ll make another batch and we can sit down and eat while it cooks.”</p><p>He sets everything down on the dining table and goes back into the kitchen to get the next batch of pancakes on the griddle. When he comes back into the dining room, Bucky has only taken one bite and is picking at the other pancakes on his plate with his fork.</p><p>“You don’t like them?” Steve asks, dismayed. “I thought for sure that combining your two favorite breakfast foods in one was gonna be a homerun.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t look at him. “Nah, they’re good. It’s just…” He pauses, stabbing a pancake with his fork. “Is this really the worst time of your life?”</p><p>“What, <em>now</em>?” Steve squeaks in disbelief. He grabs Bucky’s human wrist, desperate to be understood, and Bucky looks up at him, startled. “No, jesus, Bucky, you got it wrong. I meant the time right after I got out the ice. It was horrible, everybody I loved was dead and the future was so different it was like being stuck on another planet. I was so lonely and empty, I was really depressed for a long time, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.”</p><p>Bucky’s looking at him straight in the eyes, the expression on his sleep-creased face discordantly hard and inscrutable. “And now?”</p><p>“Now? Well, actually, things changed… they changed…” He trails off. He’s given this some thought before, and he’s talked to Dr. Castaño about it, but he’s never said it to anyone else and he’s not really sure how it’s going to sound when he says it to Bucky<em>.</em></p><p>
  <em>Oh well, here goes nothing.</em>
</p><p>“Look. Everything changed after your mask came off at the bridge. You gotta understand, in that moment it didn’t matter to me that you were an enemy soldier and that you were trying to kill me.” Bucky flinches and tries to pull his arm away, and Steve reluctantly lets him go. But he pulls out his chair and sits down, spreading his hands palm-down on the table, serious and urgent. “Listen to me, please. The world shifted on its axis. All of a sudden, for the first time since I came out of the ice, I had a real purpose. My best friend was alive. He was alive, and I was gonna find him. Of course, everything with the helicarriers and SHIELD and all those months afterwards when I was searching for you was its own version of hell, but in a different way. That terrible period of my life was over because you were alive and <em>I wasn’t alone anymore</em>.” He reaches out as he says the last line and touches Bucky’s wrist gingerly with his fingertips, his skin a soft warm thing stretched over the hard, living bone. Bucky keeps looking at him, his eyes huge and bright with unshed tears.</p><p>They’re both breathing hard, eyes locked, when Steve says, “Oh shit, the pancakes!” and jumps up, running into the kitchen. They’re a little burnt on the bottom and a little dry on the top, but they’re edible. He shuts off the stove and brings them back to the dining room on a plate. Bucky still isn’t eating, but the tears are gone and his face is soft and thoughtful.</p><p>“You said that was the second worst. What was the worst?”</p><p>Steve scrubs at his face with his hands and heaves a sigh. “Look. I didn’t want to get into this right now. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, but I want today to be a really good day, and we’re gonna get off to a bad start if we keep on like this. But I guess you deserve to know, so I’ll just tell you, it was after you fell from the train, before I put the plane down in the ice. Can we stop talking about it now?”</p><p>Bucky takes a deep breath and holds it, his eyes searching Steve’s face for a long minute before he nods and nudges Steve’s hand with his knuckles. “Okay.” He cuts a pancake in half with his fork and swirls it around in the puddle of maple syrup on his plate. “These are great, by the way. Did Sam invent them? He’s a genius.”</p><p>Steve can feel himself relax, his jaw unclenching and the jolt of adrenaline that he’d felt at the prospect of talking about <em>that</em> slowly fading away. He’s suddenly so grateful for Bucky and his improbable understanding. “I don’t know if they’re a Sam original or not, but he’s a wizard in the kitchen. Makes me look like the sorcerer’s apprentice.”</p><p>Bucky laughs, some of his good mood recovered, and shoves a forkful in his mouth.</p><p>“I invited him up to visit, actually, but I should pin him down to a specific date,” Steve says. “He hasn’t been here since before Christmas. Would that be okay with you if he came sometime in the next few months?”</p><p>Bucky narrows his eyes and says, “Where would he sleep?”</p><p>“On the couch, no problem. You know how comfortable it is. And I know you haven’t met him before,”—here he touches Bucky’s wrist again with his fingers—“or, at least not as a friend, but he’s a counselor and he works with veterans at the VA and I can promise you that he will be the most understanding houseguest you could possibly ask for. Wouldn’t even bat an eye if you didn’t come out of your bedroom the whole time he was here.”</p><p>Bucky hums evasively.</p><p>“And if it’s too much for you to have another person in the house, he can always stay in my apartment in the Tower and I can meet him there.”</p><p>Bucky looks down at his plate, avoiding Steve’s eye. “C’mon, he’s your friend, it’d be pretty shitty if he couldn’t stay in your own home because I might freak out.”</p><p>Steve shakes his head, but chews and swallows his mouthful of pancake before he says, rolling his eyes to the ceiling in mock exasperation, “Buck, I probably don’t say this enough so I’m gonna keep repeating it so you get it through your thick skull. I’d never ask someone to come stay here if it was gonna make you uncomfortable because this isn’t <em>my </em>home, this is <em>our</em> home.”</p><p>Bucky makes a choked-off noise and Steve looks down at him in alarm. His eyes are bright and wet again, but he closes them tight and takes a deep breath before saying, his voice steady, “Jesus, Steve, you’re just knocking them out of the park today. How the fuck can you be so goddamn good all the time?”</p><p>Steve opens his mouth to say something, he doesn’t know what, but Bucky pushes his chair back and stands up, turning his head toward the living room so that Steve can’t see his face. “I’m gonna go take a shower and then I’ll do the dishes while you get washed up. And then we can see what these big plans of yours are all about.”</p>
<hr/><p>An hour later, they’re standing in the hall. Bucky is lacing up his boots when Steve says, “Looks like it might rain a bit later. We might need umbrellas. Do we have any umbrellas?”</p><p>“I dunno, I haven’t used an umbrella in eighty years. Where are we going that we might need umbrellas?”</p><p>Steve looks smug. “It’s a surprise. But I can tell you that it’s in the Bronx.”</p><p>Bucky’s eyebrows scrunch down over his nose. “You’re taking me to the Bronx? For a surprise? Is the surprise that Yankee Stadium burned down?”</p><p>Steve barks out a laugh, slapping his big hand over his chest. “Yeah, I wish. C’mon, get your coat on, we need to be there at ten o’clock. We’re gonna go on the bike, but god knows what the traffic is like.”</p><p>When they pull up in front of the big arch that says “BRONX ZOO,” Steve hears Bucky’s muffled gasp inside his helmet. He turns around and looks at him, still perched on the back of the bike as he pulls the helmet off, his hair flying around like glossy dark dandelion fluff. He’s got a grin on his face stretching from ear to ear. “Stevie, are you taking me to the zoo?” he asks.</p><p>“Surprise!” Steve says, with jazz hands and everything. Bucky looks pleased as punch.</p><p>Steve stows their helmets and shoulders his backpack. “Let’s go, they opened five minutes ago. It’s a cold Tuesday and there’s a chance of rain, which should guarantee us some peace and quiet, but just in case there are any schools coming here on field trips, I think we should be in the door and far away from the entrance as soon as possible.”</p><p>The spend all morning wandering around the zoo and don’t encounter more than a handful of parents shepherding bundled-up toddlers. Bucky marvels over every exhibit as if he were a child himself, because while Steve likes animals, Bucky <em>loves</em> them. Always has.</p><p>He drags Steve by the sleeve from exhibit to exhibit, and Steve knows he should be paying attention to the animals, or, better yet, pulling out his sketchbook and getting some of them down on paper, but he can’t stop looking at Bucky. He looks so open and full of joy; Steve hasn’t seen him like this since they were teenagers. Delight erases the lines on his face, fills out the hollows under his cheekbones, and smothers the self-doubt and anxiety that live behind his eyes.</p><p>Part of Steve is incredibly proud of himself for being the catalyst for that joy, but another part of him wants to weep because he knows it won’t last, that he can’t keep Bucky like this forever. Inevitably, the bad days will return, the brooding silences, the weight that visibly presses him down. But recovery isn’t linear, as Dr. Zaidi told him time and time again. So he takes the extra-good times and tucks them away in his heart and waits as patiently as he can for the day when they’re no longer remarkable.</p><p>Eventually, they’ve seen everything, or at least that’s what Bucky says; Steve hasn’t been keeping track. Plus, it’s past their usual lunchtime and both of their stomachs are growling. They wander toward the back of the zoo and find a bench, and Steve unzips his backpack and pulls out two bottles of water and two sandwiches that he’d made that morning while Bucky was in the shower. “Here you go. Don’t unwrap it all the way or everything will fall out. I stuffed it pretty full.”</p><p>Bucky carefully peels the paper from around his and takes a bite. “Goddamn, Steve, this is one helluva sandwich. What is it?”</p><p>“Nothing special. Lettuce, red onion, pepperoncini and dill pickle mayo, and mortadella, soppressata, and provolone. You can get them at the deli, but I think mine are better. If I do say so myself,” he adds, smugly.</p><p>“You do, you do,” Bucky says around a mouthful of sandwich.</p><p>They eat in happy silence, and when they finish their sandwiches, Steve says, “What do you wanna do now?”</p><p>“I dunno,” Bucky says with a shrug. “Isn’t this your day?”</p><p>“Nuh uh, it’s <em>your</em> day. You still haven’t figured it out?”</p><p>Bucky frowns. “Steve, I told you not to tease.”</p><p>“Okay, fine.” Steve rolls his eyes. “But we can do whatever you want. I’ll take you somewhere else if there’s someplace you wanna go.”</p><p>Bucky rolls his bottle of water between his hands. “What if we just go home and watch TV?” He looks at Steve and smiles.</p><p>Steve feels so warm in the damp chill of the March air that he unzips his jacket without thinking, then reaches over and squeezes Bucky’s shoulder. “Sure, pal, that sounds perfect.”</p>
<hr/><p>They change into house clothes and sit on the couch and put on something Clint had told Steve he <em>had </em>to watch called <em>Jeeves and Wooster</em>. It’s old—not as old as them but definitely from the last century. Bucky makes skeptical noises during the opening credits, but starts laughing five minutes into the first episode.</p><p>They only get a few minutes into the fourth episode before Bucky starts to whine, “Steeeve, I’m hungry.”</p><p>“Good for you, shut up, I’m watching TV.”</p><p>“Didn’t you say it was my special day? I want dinner.” He glares at the side of Steve’s face, mock petulant.</p><p>Steve turns to give him a flat look. “Okay, fine. I was thinking about pizza. I could either make it from scratch or we could order something extra greasy from Gino’s. What do you think?”</p><p>“Gino’s, yeah. Make mine green peppers and sausage, extra cheese.”</p><p>They finish the last two episodes of the first season with plates of greasy pizza on their laps and dish towels spread all around to keep from getting the couch dirty. When the credits roll, Steve says, “Wait right here, I’ll be back in a flash.”</p><p>He runs upstairs and into his bedroom, gets on his knees, and rummages around under his bed. There’s a couple of boxes wrapped in bright paper, and he gathers them up in his arms and carries them to the top of the stairs.</p><p>“Buck?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Close your eyes.”</p><p>There’s a pause. “Why?”</p><p>Steve scuffs his bare foot on the edge of the top step. “It’s the last surprise of the day, if you look, you’re gonna ruin it.”</p><p>He can hear Bucky scoff. “Steve, what if Hydra picks this exact moment to try to kidnap me back? I can’t just close my eyes like I’m playing fucking peek-a-boo.”</p><p>“You think I don’t got your six? Jesus, you sure know how to hit a guy right where it hurts.”</p><p>Steve can hear him laughing in the living room, though there’s an edge to it that Steve doesn’t like. “Okay, fine,” Bucky finally says, “but I’m gonna sit here with my knives out. And my eyes closed. Like some kinda ding-dong.”</p><p>Steve creeps down the stairs and peeks through the archway. Sure enough, Bucky is sitting tensely on the edge of the couch, facing the windows, a short knife in each hand and his eyes squeezed tight shut.</p><p>Steve sets the wrapped boxes on a chair in the dining room and then grabs his phone from the sideboard. He thumbs open the lock screen and reads the first message.</p><p>
  <em>[Nat]: It’s in the pantry.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>[Nat]: You forgot to give me keys so I took your spares out of the junk drawer to make myself copies.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>[Nat]: There’s something from me and Clint with the cake</em>
</p><p>
  <em>[Nat]: Have fun :)</em>
</p><p>He tiptoes into the kitchen, opening the pantry door and looking around until he spots an unfamiliar white box on a shelf hidden under an unassuming stack of dishtowels. <em>Bingo,</em> he thinks, <em>Nat comes through again.</em> There’s a flat pink box underneath it and he takes them both into the dining room and sets them on the table. Then he unties the butcher’s twine that’s holding the white box shut, opens the flaps, and carefully reaches in to pull out a decadent-looking cake with chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles on the top.</p><p>He sets it down in the center of the table and rummages around in the sideboard for a box of matches and the candles he’d bought last week. He sticks a candle in the middle of the cake and rasps the head of the match against the striking surface.</p><p>Like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, Bucky leaps up and over the back of the couch, eyes wild and knives forward, but Steve already has the match on the wick and the candle flares to life.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Bucky whispers. He disappears his knives and comes up to the edge of the table, looking back and forth between the candle and Steve. “What the fuck?”</p><p>“Happy birthday, Bucky.” Steve feels like his cheeks are going to burst, his smile is so wide.</p><p>“It’s my birthday?” Bucky is still whispering, eyes still darting back and forth between the candle and Steve.</p><p>“Yep, ninety-eight years old and you don’t look a day over twenty-five.”</p><p>Bucky scoffs and rolls his eyes, but Steve can tell that he’s immensely pleased. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Stevie.”</p><p>“Okay, well how about I sing you the happy birthday song to cancel it out?”</p><p>“Oh, jesus, anything but that,” Bucky says, laughing. He comes around the back of the table and slips his metal arm around Steve’s waist. Steve puts his own arm around his shoulder.</p><p>“I guess I blow it out now?”</p><p>“Yeah, unless you wanna set the cake on fire.”</p><p>Bucky pinches his side, gently. “And I get to make a wish?”</p><p>“It’s tradition. But you can’t tell, otherwise it won’t come true.”</p><p>He watches Bucky as he stares at the candle for half a minute, a small smile on his face, and then leans over to blow it out.</p><p>On impulse, Steve presses a quick kiss to the side of Bucky’s head. It seems like the right thing to do in the moment, though the beating of his own heart confusingly belies the casualness of the gesture. Although Bucky darts him a look from the corner of his eye, he doesn’t say anything. They get plates and forks and a knife from the kitchen and cut big slices out of the cake. It’s chocolate on the inside, too, rich and decadent, not too sweet and just a little bitter.</p><p>Bucky moans with the fork still in his mouth. “Fucking hell, this is sinful.”</p><p>“Nat picked it out, actually,” Steve says. “I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to make one without you finding out, so I asked her to pick something up and drop it off while we were gone.” He takes another bite. “She did a pretty good job, too.”</p><p>They each cut another slice, and Steve pours them big glasses of milk to go with it. Then he picks up the wrapped boxes from the chair and slides them across the table. “The one in pink paper is from Nat and Clint. The others are from me.”</p><p>Bucky looks like someone had just told him he’d won a lottery he hadn’t even realized he was playing. “Presents, too?” he squeaks. Steve nods.</p><p>He opens the pink one first, and inside the paper is a cream-colored box with half a dozen small bottles of colored liquids and some strange things that look like candy-colored stones.</p><p>Steve plucks a small white card from the crumpled-up wrapping paper. “I bet this will tell us what that stuff is.” He turns it over and squints at the tiny, spiky cursive in the low light. “<em>’James, these are all for putting in the bath but use them sparingly because they’re expensive as shit, or, whatever, live like a king and dump ‘em all in at once</em>.’” He looks at Bucky. “That’s actually what it says. Um, what else. ‘<em>The things that look like rocks are called bath bombs and you just drop them in the water and they do a thing. So</em>…’” He stops abruptly. “Alright, that’s it, there’s nothing else.”</p><p>“Gimmie that.” Bucky snatches the card out of his hand and reads the last line. “<em>’So treat yourself right, don’t be like Steve.</em>’”</p><p>Bucky snorts gracelessly and Steve rolls his eyes and tuts in irritation.</p><p>The next two packages are books, three gardening books that Bucky had already renewed twice at the library, and the first three volumes of <em>The Complete Peanuts</em>, huge, heavy things in slipcovers. “Charlie Brown,” Bucky murmurs, slipping the first book out of its cover and flipping through the first few pages. “The first time we got this out of the library I wondered which one of us is Charlie Brown and which one is Snoopy.”</p><p>“Why do we have to be those two? Why not Linus and Lucy?” Steve asks, balling the wrapping paper up to put in the recycling later.</p><p>“Why not Lucy and Schroeder?” Bucky says softly. He closes the book and runs his metal hand down its spine.</p><p>“Hmm,” Steve hums, not really paying attention. “Open that funny-looking package next.”</p><p>It’s small and awkwardly-shaped, not very well wrapped, and it clanks when Bucky picks it up. He furrows his brows and pulls off the paper, and his eyes widen in delight when it turns out to be the same wind chime that was hung over the door of the garden center. “You remember everything, don’t you?” he asks Steve, and holds the windchime up, waving it gently back and forth so that it rings out sharp and sweet in the quiet house.</p><p>The very last package is a small blue box. Bucky pulls off the lid and inside are a set of dog tags on a chain. He goes very still for a very long moment, then reaches in, picks them up, and says, his voice cracking, “Are these mine?”</p><p>“Yeah, they are. Someday I’ll tell you the story of how I got them back, but not tonight. I’ve had them for a couple years. I thought I was keeping them because I was sentimental, but now I see that I was holding onto them for you.”</p><p>The tags glint dully in the light of the overhead lamp as Bucky rubs his human thumb over the ridged letters. Then his bottom lip starts to tremble, and Steve can see that tears are welling up in his eyes. He stretches his hand out to touch Bucky’s shoulder, but before he can, something breaks inside Bucky; he wails like his heart is being torn in two pieces and begins to sob. Tears pour down his cheeks and drip off of his chin, making mud of the chocolate cake crumbs on his plate. His hands fall like dead birds into his lap and he makes no effort to cover his face or wipe his tears away. He cries like a child, open-mouthed and sloppy, keening in between deep, quaking breaths.</p><p><em>Oh no oh shit oh fuck. </em>Steve is frozen in his seat, his mind whirling uselessly like a pinwheel in a stiff breeze. Then he scoots his chair around the corner of the table so fast that it screeches on the hardwood floor, probably leaving a scratch. He doesn’t care. The decision-making part of his mind is running around in circles, distraught, thinking <em>What do I do? What do I do?</em>, but he finds, all of a sudden, thathis hands are offering comfort of their own accord, patting Bucky on the shoulder, rubbing his back. And he realizes that he’s murmuring his name, over and over, “Bucky, Bucky, Bucky,” soft and worried while his hands go <em>pat pat rub rub</em>.</p><p>After what seems like an hour but is probably just a couple of minutes, Bucky brings a sleeve up to wipe his damp face and his streaming nose. His sobs start to subside, eventually turning into little hiccups, and he slowly tilts over until his head falls heavily onto Steve’s shoulder. With the arm around his shoulder, Steve pulls him as close as he possibly can without actually pulling him onto his lap. He waits for a long time, until Bucky stops crying altogether and heaves a little sigh, before he asks, tentatively, “Tell me about it?”</p><p>“James B. Barnes. It’s my name, Steve. I’m a person.”</p><p>He doesn’t understand, not really, but he nods anyway. They sit in silence for another few minutes until Bucky straightens back up, takes the chain between his two hands, and slips it over his head. He drops the tags down the front of his shirt and turns to look at Steve.</p><p>“Shit, I really made a mess on you.”</p><p>Steve looks down. It’s true, his whole left shoulder is wet and covered in snot. He grins, and Bucky grimaces. “Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna go upstairs and change, and then I’ll wash up the dishes.” He stands up and walks around the table.</p><p>Bucky stretches, joints popping, and follows Steve through the living room and up the stairs. “I just wanna go to bed, if that’s okay. I feel like a paper bag that’s been left out in the rain.”</p><p>“Of course it’s okay.” They both walk into Steve’s bedroom, and Steve strips his damp shirt off while Bucky picks up the pajama pants and the North Face hoodie that Steve had draped over the back of the chair that morning.</p><p>He waits in the doorway while Steve pulls a clean t-shirt out of his dresser and slips it over his head. Then, when Steve turns to leave, he crowds into his space, slouches a bit so that he can tuck his head under Steve’s chin and throws his arms around Steve’s chest, crushing his ribs until they creak. The pajamas are crumpled into a ball between them.</p><p>“Thanks,” he says after a minute. His voice is low and tired and a little rough from crying. “Thanks for remembering my birthday. For all the presents. For keeping my name for me.”</p><p>Steve brings a hand up to the nape of Bucky’s neck and squeezes. He feels the tears prickling his own eyes, now, but he scrunches them shut and wills them to go away.</p><p>They stand in silence for another couple of minutes, until Bucky starts to sag against him and Steve realizes that he’s falling asleep on his feet. Then he puts his hands on his shoulders and turns him around, guiding him across the hall into his own bedroom, and goes downstairs to clean up.</p>
<hr/><p>Natasha calls at the end of the month. “Steve, you’re turning into a hermit. No one has seen you in ages. Clint and Bruce and I are coming over and we’re bringing take out.”</p><p>Steve starts to protest, but she cuts him off. “Look, I’m serious. Have you forgotten that your leave of absence is going to be up on April 6th? Any time after then, we could be sent out on a mission somewhere for god knows how long. James needs to get comfortable with seeing other people and being by himself, otherwise it’s going to be really hard on him. You’ve been attached at the hip since January. Since September, if we count all those hours you spent sitting on opposite sides of the same door.”</p><p>Steve splutters a little. “We’re not attached at the hip, he’s leaving the house by himself nearly every day, now, and sometimes he doesn’t even tell me where he goes!”</p><p>There’s a judgmental silence on the other end of the line, and finally, Steve gives in. He hadn’t really thought about it yet,—actually, he’s been avoiding it—but he knows that Natasha is right. “Okay, you’ve got a point. We haven’t talked about it yet, but I guess we’re gonna have to. Can you give me time to talk to him first, though? Could you come tomorrow for lunch instead?”</p><p>“Yeah, that’s okay,” she says. “Don’t freak out, Steve. He’ll be fine. He’s taken care of himself in far worse places than your safe, warm house in the middle of gentrified Brooklyn.”</p><p>Steve huffs a half-laugh, half-sigh. “Okay, okay. See you tomorrow.”</p>
<hr/><p>That night they make polenta with poached eggs and sautéed mushrooms for dinner. Steve had intended to wait until debriefing to talk about going back to work, but as they’re standing side by side in the kitchen, Steve slicing the early morels they’d bought for an arm and a leg at the market and Bucky mincing shallots, he suddenly blurts out, “I have to go back to work next week.”</p><p>Bucky glances over at him. “Okay?”</p><p>“Well, you know I took a leave of absence when you got out of SHIELD, but it was only three months, so it’ll be up next week.” He uses the side of his knife to scrape the sliced morels into a bowl. Bucky is mincing the garlic now, his knife making a measured <em>snick snick</em> on the butcher’s block. “And part of me doesn’t want to go back, not really. This has been the most relaxing three months of my entire life. I wish I could just…” he waves his hand around, vaguely, “do this all the time.” He’s leaving a lot of things unsaid, but maybe Bucky knows what he can’t put into words. “But at the same time, I kinda do want to go back. I miss being part of a team. I miss having missions, objectives, tangible goals.” He pulls a cheese grater out of a drawer.</p><p>“You talk a big talk, but I think you just miss kicking ass,” Bucky says, the side of his mouth quirking up.</p><p>Steve runs a hand through his hair so that it flops down over his forehead, badly in need of a cut. “I mean, maybe you’ve got a point…” he starts, but the <em>beep beep</em> of the kitchen timer cuts him off. He takes the polenta out of the oven while Bucky unhooks their cast-iron skillet from the pot rack and sets it on the stove.</p><p>“Steve. I know you’re worried about me. But I’m gonna be fine. It’ll be a big change, especially if they send you on something long term, but we’ll get used to it. I’ve taken care of myself in a lot worse conditions than this.”</p><p>Steve laughs. “That’s exactly what Nat said.”</p><p>“She’s smart,” Bucky says with a grin.</p><p>Now that he’s got it out in the open, Steve feels a little better, and Bucky doesn’t seem too bothered, not for the moment.</p><p>When the shallots are soft and fragrant and the butter is starting to brown, Bucky dumps the bowl of morels into the skillet and tosses them a few times like a professional chef, then moves to the side so that Steve can slide the polenta back into the oven. Steve gets a saucepan out of the cabinet for Bucky to poach eggs, and they switch places at the stove.</p><p>They listen to music and move around each other like two cogs in a tower clock, separate but enmeshed, their teeth coming together flawlessly only to spin away again on another circuit. When he thinks about it, it thrills Steve down to his toes to find that they work together just as well as they did before—and during—the war, but he thinks about it less and less as the days go by. What had, but weeks ago, been fresh and exciting has turned into the new-old normal, just Steve and Bucky, Bucky and Steve, doing what they always do, just like they’ve always done it.</p><p>He gets two shallow bowls out of the cabinet and makes a bed of golden polenta in each one, dividing the morels between them. Then he holds the bowls steady while Bucky fishes the poached eggs out of the water and puts three in each bowl. Steve carries the bowls out to the table while Bucky grabs forks and the water pitcher, and they sit down to dinner.</p>
<hr/><p>Later, during debriefing, they talk about Steve going back to work, for real this time.</p><p>“It’s a really unpredictable schedule, as I’m sure you’ve already figured out,” Steve says. “Sometimes we get called out every other day, something nothing for weeks. And then sometimes there’s an earthquake in, I don’t know, Ulaanbaatar, and we’re gone for ten days.”</p><p>Bucky’s voice is muffled in the rolled collar of Steve’s sweater. “Yeah, I know. I remember the times when you disappeared on me when I was at SHIELD. I know you always came down and told me you were leaving, but I didn’t have much to do in those days, so each day you didn’t come around to pester me through the door felt like a week.”</p><p>Steve pulls him a little bit closer. They don’t talk much about the days at SHIELD, but he remembers how hard it was for him to leave, too. “I want you to get a phone so that I can contact you. I know Tony will give you a Starkphone if I ask.”</p><p>“Uh uh, I’d rather have a burner. I’ll just get one at the drug store next time we’re there. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against Tony, I’d just rather not have his tech on me all the time.”</p><p>“I understand,” Steve says, laughing softly. “He can get a little invasive if he thinks it’s warranted. And I’m gonna make a point to tell you what my schedule is every day. I know I don’t have to,” he continues quickly, staving off Bucky’s inevitable remark about how he doesn’t <em>have</em> to, “but I want to. I think it’s important for you to know if I have an early morning meeting at the Tower but I’ll be home for lunch, or if I have to go to a charity event that’s gonna keep me in Manhattan until the wee hours.”</p><p>“I… guess that’s a good idea,” Bucky says reluctantly. “I know Dr. Zaidi thinks we’re <em>broadly codependent</em>,”—he waves his hand in the air and puts on the posh accent he uses to imitate his therapist—“but you’ve been sticking your nose in my business since you were six years old, so I guess nothing has changed.”</p><p>Steve puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and rears back in shock. “Excuse me? <em>Excuse me??</em> Who was sticking their nose in whose business, now? If I’m not mistaken, and let’s be honest, I’m the one with an eidetic memory, it was Bucky fuckin’ Barnes who was always interrupting my fights right when I had the other guy on the ropes. Not to mention things like, oh, climbing through my window in the middle of the night to make sure I’d taken my medicine or trying every other minute to set me up on dates with girls when I didn’t even like girls!”</p><p>Bucky’s still got his arms in a loose loop around Steve’s ribs, but he’s leaning back, looking at him suspiciously. “Whaddya mean, you didn’t even like girls?”</p><p>
  <em>Oh shit.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh fuck.</em>
</p><p>Steve freezes like a rabbit in front of a rapidly approaching snowplow. “Uhhhhhhhhh,” he says, drawing it out because he has no idea what to do next. His hindbrain is zooming around in circles, screaming <em>RUN!! HIDE!!</em> while the rational part of his brain is saying <em>Just tell him, he’ll understand, it’s the future, it’s okay now, he’s your best friend, you can’t hide it, you shouldn’t hide it</em> and then, a few seconds later, <em>Stop making that noise you fucking numbskull.</em></p><p>Bucky looks at him for a moment, bemused, brows knit, and then nods once with dawning understanding and a sort of satisfaction and a few other things that Steve can’t even begin to parse. Then he gives Steve a look, a look he’s been intimately familiar with since he was six years old, a look that is a mixture of deep, abiding affection and: <em>You ninny. You brickheaded ding-dong. You absolute fucking idiot.</em></p><p>“Stevie,” he says, in a you-lil’-rascal sort of voice, “are you trying to tell me that you like boys?”</p><p>“Men,” Steve squeaks out in a voice that would do a choirboy proud.</p><p>Bucky furrows his brows again. A whole series of unreadable emotions flits over his face, and Steve feels compelled by something he can’t name to look away. “But. But what about Peggy? Were you just leading her on?” He sounds angry, all of a sudden, and Steve trips all over himself in his rush to explain.</p><p>“No, no, nothing like that, I would <em>never</em>, it was like, you know,” he pauses, lifting his hands from where they’re still resting on Bucky’s shoulders to scrub at his face. He leaves his fingers pressed to his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Fuck. Okay. I never liked girls <em>like that</em> when we were kids. I never understood what the fuss was about, why you insisted on talking about them all the goddamn time. I thought they were nice, as friends, but nothing to get worked up over. And then when we were teenagers, I understood because I started to feel that way about… about guys, but I didn’t feel that way about <em>them</em>. And then, and then I met Peggy, and she was different, and it was like getting hit by a car, and finally I understood what you’d been seeing in girls all along.”</p><p>He presses his fingers harder into his eyes until stars explode across his vision. His heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s about to explode in tandem across the inside of his chest. “I guess, now that we’re living in the future, you’d call me bi? Bisexual.”</p><p>“Huh,” says Bucky. “Okay.” And then to Steve’s utter stupefaction and overwhelming relief, he swats Steve’s upraised hands out of the way and lays his head back down on Steve’s shoulder. After a moment, Steve tentatively brings his arms down from their don’t-shoot position and settles them lightly on Bucky’s shoulders.</p><p>“Don’t be a dipshit, Steve. You can hug me like normal. You’re not the kind of guy to take advantage. Not without asking permission first.” He snickers into Steve’s sweater.</p><p>Steve feels shaky with adrenaline and weak at the knees with giddy relief, but he steels himself and tightens his arms around Bucky again. They stand silent for a minute more, each thinking his own private thoughts, Steve tapping his fingers lightly on Bucky’s human shoulder and Bucky breathing into the crook of Steve’s neck.</p><p>Steve can’t stop thinking about how nonchalant Bucky was about it, how unsurprised, how understanding. <em>What did I ever do to deserve him? </em>he thinks. It looks like a nice thought on the surface, but he recognizes that it comes from a dark place. Then he thinks, <em>Dr. Castaño will be proud of me</em>, as if she were his ma, and laughs at himself.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” Bucky says into his neck.</p><p>“I was just thinking that my therapist will be proud of me for coming out to you like I’m a kid showing her my fucking report card or something.”</p><p>Bucky pushes back on Steve’s shoulders and looks at him, amused and exasperated. “But it <em>is</em> something to be proud of.” Then his eyes slide away, over Steve’s shoulder, and the expression on his face changes back into something inscrutable, his gaze a dark velvet curtain pulled closed. “You should be proud of yourself,” he says to the wall behind Steve. “It’s hard to come out.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, wishing again that he could read Bucky’s face as well as he used to. Something is going on in there, but it’s as hidden from him as the dark side of the moon. “You’re the first person I’ve told, besides Dr. Castaño. And she doesn’t really count.”</p><p>All Bucky says is “Hmm,” and then steps back and away from Steve. “Well, thank you for telling me,” he says, and meets Steve’s eye again, almost hesitantly, almost shyly, something strangely wistful in the set of his face. “Thank you for trusting me.”</p><p>“How could I not?” Steve says with a shrug, “It’s you.”</p><p>Bucky opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, but then closes it again and takes another step back until he’s standing on the threshold of his bedroom, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He’s still holding Steve’s gaze, but his eyes are thrown into shadow under the ridge of his brow. Steve just stands with his hands dangling at his sides and looks back, confused by the sudden change in Bucky’s demeanor, but not worried. It <em>is </em>Bucky, after all. He does feel a little lost, though, like all the lights have cut off suddenly and he’s waiting for his eyes to adjust to the faint glow of the stars.</p><p>In the end, all Bucky does is nod and flash him a half smile. Then he says, “’Night, Steve,” and retreats into his bedroom, closing the door softly behind him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Me rereading the end of this chapter: Is that angst? That's not angst. But maybe it is? No, definitely not. It's... it's... <em>foreshadowing!</em></p><p><em>novio</em> = boyfriend<br/><em>nada de nada</em> = absolutely nothing</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. April</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As promised—or threatened—Natasha, Clint, and Bruce come over the next day with a big bag of meatball subs.</p><p>Bucky’s already downstairs when they arrive, standing behind Steve in the hallway, shifting nervously back and forth with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Natasha is the first through the door. “Hello, Steve,” she says, smiling warmly and doing a little eyebrow wiggle whose meaning he completely fails to grasp. She hangs her motorcycle jacket up on the coat hooks and toes her slouchy boots off by the shoe bench. She kisses Steve on the cheek—he’s ready for it this time—and walks up to Bucky. “James.”</p><p>Bucky clears his throat. “Bucky’s okay.” And then, sounding a little nervous, he rushes to add, “If you want.”</p><p>Steve can only see a sliver of Natasha’s profile, but the way her eyes crinkle in a smile is unmistakable. Bucky holds his right hand out, but Natasha looks at it and then back up to him and says, “You want a kiss, too?” Bucky’s eyes go wide and startled and he glances over to Steve, who is watching the scene unfold. They’ve talked about Natasha a lot in the last few weeks, just like they’ve talked about Sam. Bucky knows, even if he doesn’t remember, that she had met the Winter Soldier before and had come out of the encounter the worse for it. He also knows, though, that she had been his advocate at SHIELD, supporting Dr. Zaidi and ultimately helping to keep him away from the grasping fingers of SHIELD’s internal machinations.</p><p>Not to mention the fact that she’s one of Steve’s best friends, a group that only has three members: Sam, Natasha, and Bucky himself.</p><p>Steve watches all of this flit over his face in the span of half a moment, and then Bucky takes a deep breath and says, “Okay.” He drops his arm back down by his side and stands there awkwardly, wrongfooted but not unsettled. Natasha leans in on tiptoes and kisses his stubbled cheek, then spins away and disappears through the living room door before Bucky can even blink.</p><p>He still looks a little startled, but when Steve gives him a grin and a thumbs up, he grins back.</p><p>Clint comes through the door next, arms laden with bags of food. “What are you two assholes laughing at?” he asks. Steve opens his mouth to say something insulting, but Bucky gets there before him. “Your face,” he says, and then immediately looks horrified at making such a flippant remark to someone he hardly knows.</p><p>Steve bursts out laughing, but Clint just grins from ear to ear. “Barnes, nice to see you, too. I’d flip you the bird if my hands weren’t full of all this delicious food I generously brought for us to share in a spirit of camaraderie and friendship.”</p><p>Bruce comes in at that moment and closes the door behind him. He takes his coat and scarf off, hanging them on the coat hooks beside Natasha’s. “Steve, nice to see you,” he says. “You’re looking great, three months of vacation have done wonders.” He pushes his glasses up his nose and peers closer at Steve’s face. “You look like you’ve actually been sleeping for the first time in four years.”</p><p>Steve says, “Uhh, thanks?” but Bruce has already moved past him and is holding out his hand for Bucky to shake. “Sergeant Barnes, it’s lovely to finally meet you.”</p><p>Bucky takes his hand and says, “Just Barnes. Or Bucky.”</p><p>“Bucky, of course. I’ve heard so much about you from Nat and Clint, and Steve, who hasn’t shut up about you since he came out of the ice, actually.” They both turn to look at Steve. Bucky’s eyebrows are encroaching on his hairline and he’s got a little smile on his face, as if to say, <em>Oh yeah?</em></p><p>Steve, inevitably, feels the heat bloom across his cheeks. “Okay, okay,” he says gruffly, “let’s get a move on, we’re all hungry.” He herds them through the living room and into the dining room.</p><p>The table is already set and there are five bottles of beer and a pile of foil-wrapped meatball subs in the middle of the table. They all sit down and proceed to dirty all of Steve’s cloth napkins and an unconscionable amount of paper towels. Half of Clint’s meatballs slide out of the back of his sub and onto his lap, and he awkwardly pulls his jeans off in the living room and then sits back down at the table in his underwear until Bruce tuts at him disapprovingly and Steve runs upstairs to get him a clean pair of sweatpants.</p><p>Later, bellies full and bodies a little weak with laughter, while Clint and Bruce are taking the dirty plates into the kitchen, Natasha takes a pull of her beer, leans over the table, and says, “Okay, guys, let’s talk about the real reason we’re here. This is an intervention.”</p><p>Bucky frowns and looks at Steve. Steve rolls his eyes and says, “She means that they want to talk about me going back on active duty.”</p><p>“Ah, okay.” Bucky’s frown deepens. He hooks his thumb toward the stairs. “I’m just gonna go upstairs, then.”</p><p>Natasha reaches across the table, telegraphing the movement of her hand, and taps her fingers against Bucky’s human knuckles. “No, Bucky, we actually want to talk to <em>you</em> about what <em>you’re</em> going to do when Steve goes back on active duty.”</p><p>“Yeah, no one gives a shit about Steve,” Clint yells from the kitchen. “I hate you guys,” Steve mutters under his breath, but there’s half a laugh in it.</p><p>“I can take care of myself,” Bucky says. Steve can see him getting defensive, his shoulders moving up toward his ears. He looks up at Natasha, but only meets her eye for half a second before he glances back down at his hands clasped together on the tabletop.</p><p>Bruce comes in, wiping his hands on a dishtowel, and sits down at the table. “We know that, Bucky.”</p><p>“You’re way more competent than Steve, and he survived living by himself for months.” Clint comes into the dining room with five fresh beers just as Steve scoffs, and the side of Bucky’s mouth quirks up involuntarily.</p><p>Bruce continues as if Clint hadn’t interrupted him, “But we’re not just talking about the bottom tier of Maslow’s hierarchy, here. You’ve made remarkable progress in the few months since you left SHIELD, and a lot of that has to do with the routines that you both have established and the contact and fellowship that living with Steve provides. And those things are going to be disrupted when he starts getting sent on missions.”</p><p>Bucky looks less defensive, but Steve knows he’s still fighting the urge to bolt out of the room. There are too many eyes on him, too much attention, too many people who want to say his name. Steve turns in his chair a little and reaches out with his feet under the table, hooking both of his ankles around one of Bucky’s. When Bucky glances up at him, Steve gives him a small, private smile, and Bucky’s shoulders relax another fraction of an inch.</p><p>“So,” Bruce continues, “we were thinking that it’d be a good idea to come up with a system where if Steve gets sent out on a longer mission, whoever’s not with him can check in with you every day. Especially if he’s on comms blackout. And you know, of course, that Steve has an apartment in the Tower, and you can always come and stay there when he’s gone. Everything’s taken care of, you wouldn’t have to worry about food or security or…”</p><p>Bucky cuts him off with a terse shake of his head. “Thanks, but I’m not going to Manhattan. I want to stay in my own home.”</p><p>Steve feels his chest light up like a furnace, a noise in his ears like a distant warm and happy roar.</p><p>“Of course,” Natasha says reassuringly. “We know you can take care of yourself. Bruce only suggested it in case you need the company. It’s not a good idea to spend too much time alone.”</p><p>“I…” Bucky shoots Steve an inscrutable look and takes a deep breath. “Okay, I haven’t told Steve this yet, but I guess I’m gonna have to now in order to make all of you people feel better.” He glares a little at Natasha, Clint, and Bruce in turn, and Steve feels a little frisson of disquiet.</p><p>“I kinda have a job.”</p><p>“You do?” Natasha says, at the same time as Steve says, “You <em>what??</em>” Bruce just raises his eyebrows and Clint stares at the ceiling, twiddling his thumbs.</p><p>Bucky turns in his seat and faces Steve, careful to keep their feet tangled together like intermingled taproots. “Well, it’s not a <em>job </em>job. You remember the lady at the garden center?” Steve nods. “And you remember I went there last week to buy some basil?” Steve nods again, feeling his brow furrow against his will. There’s a nervous little pitter-patter in the pit of his stomach, but he doesn’t know why.</p><p>“Well,” Bucky continues, looking at him with his lively, wide-open eyes, “she told me that there’s a community garden over on 18th Street near the park, really close to the ballfields.” Steve nods again and leans forward. “And they need volunteers to plant and water and work the compost bins, all that stuff.”</p><p>Steve can feel his face light up, and the happy roar gets a little louder. “And you’re gonna do it? That’s great, Buck! What a great idea, it’s perfect for you!”</p><p>Bucky looks immensely pleased. “It’s just a couple times a week at a couple hours a pop, but I… I took the step and went a few days ago to meet the rest of the crew.”</p><p>Steve laughs out loud. “I had no idea that’s what you were doing when you went out by yourself, you sneaky bastard!”</p><p>Bucky rests his metal hand on Steve’s knee and squeezes. “I wanted to make sure it was gonna work out first before I surprised you with the news.” Both of them are grinning like fools. “And they have bees, Steve. <em>Bees</em>.”</p><p>Steve immediately knows exactly what Bucky is thinking. “Bees? <em>Bees</em>.”</p><p>Bucky is squeezing his knee again. “Yeah, I know, right? I don’t think the backyard’s big enough, so they’d probably have to go on the roof to avoid pissing off the neighbors, but that wouldn’t be a problem if we get a long ladder and you let me go through the skylight in the studio.”</p><p>“Wouldn’t be too hard to build a little shelter out of wood,” Steve says, and Bucky interrupts, picking up his train of thought excitedly, “but we probably don’t even need to do that if the hives are good enough. I’m gonna see if there are any books about bees at the library, and then we can…”</p><p>All of a sudden, someone clears their throat, and Steve realizes that he’s forgotten about their three guests. Bucky pulls his hand off Steve’s knee like he’s been branded, and they both sit back so fast their chairs rock backwards.</p><p>“Well,” says Natasha, smirking. “Looks like you two don’t need our help at all.”</p>
<hr/><p>The next day, Bucky’s sitting on the couch after lunch with <em>Howl’s Moving Castle</em> when Steve comes over and slumps down heavily next to him. “Okay, we need to sit down and make a list of everything we have to do before I go back to work. We’ve only got five days.”</p><p>Bucky looks up from his book. “I thought we already talked about this. I can take care of myself, Steve. I go by myself to the library, the bakery, the nursery, the bodega, the community garden, and the Cortelyou market and the one on the other side of the park. I’ve got a phone and I can call Clint, Nat, Bruce, or Dr. Zaidi if I have a problem. Not to mention that I’m ninety-eight years old and I’m the fucking Winter Soldier. What else do I need?”</p><p>Steve frowns, but Bucky just gives him a flat look and says, “Stop it with that face.”</p><p>“Okay, fine.” Steve pushes the tips of his fingers across the line of his brow bone, trying to will the words <em>Winter Soldier</em> away. “I don’t mean that stuff, anyway. I mean, like, if you need lumber to build your garden beds, maybe we should get it now so that I can help with the delivery and everything. And you’re gonna need a bunch of dirt, right? That’s gonna have to be delivered, too.”</p><p>“Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I guess so. I hadn’t thought about it too much, yet.” Bucky looks thoughtful, gazing out the window at the rain that’s drumming softly but steadily against the panes.</p><p>Steve turns in his seat, crooking one leg on the cushion, his knee on Bucky’s thigh. “And, I was thinking, what if we took a trip? Just a little one? It’s not the best time, Easter’s this weekend, but if we don’t go to any resort towns or beaches, we can probably avoid the spring break crowd. The rain’s going to let up this evening and then it’s supposed to be sunny straight through til next week.”</p><p>Bucky looks skeptical. “A trip?”</p><p>“Yeah, I mean, somewhere we can get to on the bike, maybe do some hiking, stay in a bed-and-breakfast, just a day or two. Might be interesting to get out of New York.”</p><p>Bucky looks wary, a little anxious line creasing his forehead. “A bed-and-breakfast? You mean, like, stay in somebody else’s house?”</p><p>Steve resists the urge to lean over and smooth the line out with his thumb like he’d smooth out a dog-eared corner in a favorite book. “Yeah, kinda, but we could stay in a motel if you think that’s better. Or, it’s a little early to go camping, but we could even do that, I’ll just have to get a tent.”</p><p>Bucky thinks for a moment, his brow furrowed even further. The pink nib of his tongue darts out and licks his lower lip. “I don’t think I could stay in somebody else’s house. I’d be too paranoid about security. Maybe a motel, but why not camping? I might like camping. Maybe it’ll be just like the army days.”</p><p>Steve grins. “Sure, cold and wet and godawful rations, what’s not to love?” Bucky rolls his eyes. “But, hey, if I get some panniers for the bike, we could take real food and a little camping stove, and tents nowadays have to be way better than the scraps of cloth that we had back in the war, and we’re gonna need sleeping bags. Plus food, but it’s gotta be easy to pack, maybe pasta, but what could we put in it that doesn’t come in a glass jar? And I’d better double-check the weather just in case…”</p><p>“Steve, you’ve got your mission face on.”</p><p>Steve stops in his tracks. He hadn’t even realized that he’d gotten off the couch and started pacing around the living room. “Oops,” he says sheepishly.</p><p>Bucky smiles at him softly. “It’s okay, I suspect I’d never have done anything of consequence in my life if it weren’t for you and your fucking mission face.”</p><p>Steve circles around the coffee table and kicks Bucky in the shin with his bare toes, just a little bit. “Okay asshole, how about this. You be mission control and I’ll be the supply train. So I’m gonna go buy the tent and the panniers and the food and all that stuff, and you figure out where we’re going and how we have to get there. We can leave tomorrow, bright and early, be back on Friday?”</p><p>Bucky grins, happy and bright and a little sharp around the edges. “Okay, sounds like a plan.” Then he hooks his leg around the back of Steve’s knee and pulls. Steve goes down with a squawk, falling halfway across the couch, and Bucky jams his metal fingers hard under his ribs and tickles before Steve can react. He scrambles out from under Steve’s flailing body and crows, “That’s for kicking me, motherfucker.” Then he snatches the laptop off the coffee table and holds it out in front of him like a shield. “No payback, you might make me drop this very delicate and expensive piece of tactical equipment.”</p><p>Steve is panting a little, crouched on all fours on the couch cushions like a tiger in the tall grass, ready to spring, but he just says, “Okay, Buck. Okay. You know as well as I do that revenge is a dish best served cold.”</p><p>“Ooh,” says Bucky, tucking the laptop under his arm and holding the back of his metal hand up to his forehead, pretending to feel faint. “Mister Rogers! I’m so scared!”</p><p>“You better be. What better place for revenge than a tent in the middle of the wilderness?” His grin stretches from ear to ear, feral and wicked, and he lowers his voice to a growl. “No one will hear you scream.”</p><p>Bucky giggles, but it comes out high-pitched and nervous. “Oh jesus, Steve, now you’re really scaring me. I’m gonna have to bring my gear on this trip.”</p><p>Steve feels a little shock of remorse and stands up, making sure that his smile is soft and amused again. He gives Bucky’s shoulder a gentle punch. “Alright, alright. Just remember, we have to carry everything on the bike, so no bazookas or anything.”</p><p>Bucky snorts. “Don’t worry, punk, SHIELD took all my bazookas and they never gave ‘em back.”</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning, they get up early and pack the panniers with food, water, utensils, a little one-burner stove, and the three-cup moka pot that Bucky had bought at a thrift store just because it was cute. Their clothes and compact sleeping bags fit in Steve’s duffel, which gets strapped on the back of the bike with the tent. The forecast is sunny but early-spring cool, with frost overnight, but the sleeping bags are rated to -10°F and they both run extra hot, so Steve’s not worried.</p><p>It’s a little tighter fit than usual, and with the bags strapped on the back, Bucky has to scoot in closer to Steve than he normally sits. As they pull out of the parking space in front of the house, Steve feels warm and happy, full of anticipation at the start of an adventure, and acutely aware of Bucky’s chest plastered to his back, his arms wrapped tight around his waist. When he pulls out from the curb, he wobbles the bike a little bit from sheer nerves, which earns him a jab in the stomach from Bucky’s thumb. However, once they get past Mt. Vernon and pick up highway 87, the traffic lets up and Steve can lose himself in the driving, letting the feeling of Bucky hugging him close behind fade into the background.</p><p>In the end, Bucky had decided that they should go to the Catskills, so it’s late morning by the time they arrive. The park ranger directs them to an open meadow where they can pitch their tent. There’s another tent on the far side of the meadow, but the ranger tells them that she’s not expecting anyone else to show up, even though it’s the week before Easter. It’s just too cold for regular people.</p><p>The tent, with its collapsible poles and weird flaps like a squid on stilts, takes them longer than expected to set up, and when they finally crawl in, weak with laughter, to test it, it turns out that a regular 3-person tent is actually a 1.5-supersoldier tent.</p><p>“Maybe we should sleep head-to-foot,” Steve says, swiveling around and lying down with his head poking out the entrance.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> no,” Bucky screeches, sitting straight up, his head bumping into the tent ceiling. “One, your feet don’t exactly smell like a dozen roses, pal, and two, I know too damn well how you windmill around in your sleep and I’m not getting my nose broken by your big fucking foot at three o’clock in the morning.”</p><p>Steve heaves his put-upon sigh. “Well, what do you wanna do? Arm wrestle to see who sleeps outside?”</p><p>Bucky grins. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Stevie. You know you can’t beat this arm.” He flexes, and Steve can see the metal bicep bulge underneath the sleeve of his hoodie. “It’ll just have to be spoons.”</p><p>Steve can feel himself looking stupid. “Spoons?”</p><p>“Yeah, you know, big spoon, little spoon.” He cups his hands front to back. “We can arm wrestle for that, though. I wanna be the little spoon.”</p><p><em>“</em>Ah. Spooning,” Steve says. The nerves are back, a little wibble in the pit of his stomach that feels like over-caffeination. All of a sudden, he remembers the big red button with the big white question mark and frowns. <em>This is…</em> he thinks, not sure how to finish that thought, not even sure if it’s a thought he wants to finish at all.</p><p>Bucky is still smiling, amused, so Steve rearranges his face into something more neutral, willing the over-caffeination to disappear and leave him in peace. “Are you…” he hesitates. “Are you sure? You don’t sleep too well in your own bed at home. I don’t mind sleeping outside if I need to.”</p><p>As soon as Bucky hears the hesitation in his voice, the smile drops off his face. “Are you afraid I’m gonna hurt you if I have a nightmare?”</p><p>All of a sudden, he looks stricken, and Steve thinks, <em>Shit, maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I should have bought two tents.</em></p><p>“No, no, christ, it’s not that.” He runs a hand through his hair. He hasn’t cut it since before Christmas; it’s getting long, and it doesn’t stick up anymore, just flops back down on his forehead. “You never act like you’re gonna hurt me when you have a nightmare at home. And anyway, I’m pretty sure I could hold you off long enough for you to wake up properly.” He gives Bucky a small smile. “I just meant, I don’t want you to sleep any worse than you normally do because there’s somebody else in the room with you.” He gestures helplessly around him. “Or, well, the tent.”</p><p>Bucky looks somewhat mollified. “I don’t think it’s gonna be a problem. Can…” he hesitates, looking at his hands crossed in his lap, and then back up at Steve. “Can we just try it? And see? I just really want this to be, you know. I mean, <em>I</em> wanna be…” he hesitates. Clears his throat. “Normal.”</p><p>Steve’s heart breaks a little bit. He scoots further into the tent until he can reach over and squeeze Bucky’s shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, of course, whatever you want, Buck. You just let me know what you want and we’ll do it.” His hand is still on Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky is looking at him, his eyes round, his mouth drawn to one side, expression indecipherable. There’s a tension clouding the air that Steve doesn’t understand, and each <em>tick</em> of the second hand on his watch seems to come slower than the one before. After a moment that seems to stretch into the distant future but, at the same time, passes in the blink of an eye, Bucky shakes himself a little and smiles. “Jerk.”</p><p>Steve feels a strange little shiver of relief run through him. He turns around and scoots out the tent flap. “Punk. I’m gonna go make lunch.”</p>
<hr/><p>In the end, it’s not a big deal.</p><p>After lunch, they go hiking and come back right as the sun is setting, dirty and exhausted. Bucky boils water for pasta, which they eat mixed with tuna from a packet and sundried tomatoes in olive oil and some shelf-stable parmesan-adjacent cheese product. Bucky makes a face at it, but dumps half the canister on his pasta, anyway.</p><p>While Steve is cleaning up, Bucky walks down to the creek that borders the meadow and washes his hair. “That water is cold as shit,” he says when he gets back, wringing his hair out with the towel, “but surprisingly refreshing.”</p><p>“You’re getting soft, Barnes. Since when have you had to wash your hair every day?”</p><p>“Since it got this long, jerk,” Bucky says. It <em>is </em>long, hanging in soft waves past his shoulders, rich and glossy like burnt caramel. He’s pulled a switchblade comb out of the duffle bag and is combing his hair out in the light of the dying campfire. “If I don’t take care of it, it gets really tangled. And if it gets too tangled, I’m just gonna get frustrated and cut it off.”</p><p>Steve feels a little flicker of.. of what? Dismay? At what? That Bucky might decide to cut his hair? His mouth, barely connected to his brain as it is, runs away without his permission and he says, “You can’t cut your hair, Buck, it’s your trademark.”</p><p>To his surprise, Bucky looks shocked, and then delighted, and bursts out laughing. “My trademark? You think my hair is my trademark? God love ya, Stevie, you idiot.”</p><p>Steve looks sour, feeling irritated and giddy all at once. “Yeah? And? It’s pretty distinctive. What else could be your trademark?”</p><p>Bucky looks at him again with that shocked, delighted look and his laughter rings out over the open meadow, echoing back toward them off the tall oaks and sugar maples that are sleeping in the dark. “Oh Stevie, sweet, innocent Stevie,” he finally gasps as his laughter subsides. He wipes his eyes and then strips off his hoodie in one smooth movement, pushing the sleeves of his thermal shirt up to his elbows. Steve can see the skin on his human arm pebble immediately in the cold air, and he holds out his metal arm and turns it so that it catches the light from the flames. “What the fuck do you think this is?”</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>“Yeah, oh.” Bucky pulls his hoodie back on. He’s still smiling, a little fond and a little sarcastic.</p><p>Steve feels over-caffeinated again and a little embarrassed. But not too much. “I forget about your arm, you know. I see it every day, so it’s just as normal to me as the rest of you.”</p><p>Bucky divides his hair into three pieces with his fingers and starts to braid. He’s looking at the fire, not at Steve. “Just as normal as the rest of me,” he says softly. He wraps an elastic deftly around the end of his braid and throws it over his shoulder. “Alright. I’m dead on my feet. Time for bed.”</p><p>They crawl into the tent and, after awkwardly elbowing each other a few times, manage to get inside their sleeping bags and zip up. “You do know how to spoon, don’t you?” Bucky asks with a yawn. He rolls over with his back to Steve.</p><p>“Shut up, jerk.” Steve rolls over too and scoots in, fitting himself behind Bucky like a puzzle piece. It gives them just enough space that neither one of them is touching the tent walls, cold and damp with the fallen dew. Steve closes his eyes and lies muddled-headed in the dark for a minute, wondering vaguely why he feels like he’s skipped a step. His mind, half-asleep already, says <em>put your arm around him</em>, and Steve wriggles his arm out of his sleeping bag and throws it over Bucky’s waist. He’s so close that he can smell Bucky’s orange blossom shampoo and an undercurrent of something fainter– river water, like the smell of rain and wet granite and decaying green things. A small, faraway part of his mind starts to babble about smells and hair and the rise and fall of Bucky’s back against his chest, but then a wave of exhaustion sweeps over him and pulls him down into the depths of sleep.</p>
<hr/><p>When he wakes up in the morning, he’s lying curled around an empty sleeping bag. It’s cold in the tent, and when he rolls over and knocks his arm against the canvas, the thin layer of ice on the outside crunches. He wiggles out of his sleeping back and wraps it around his shoulders like a cape, shoves his feet into his boots, and unzips the tent flap. Bucky is sitting outside, close to the fire, with a steaming cup of coffee in his hands. The sun is just coming up over the tops of the trees, picking out each frosted blade of grass in the meadow in fiery gold.</p><p>Without turning around, Bucky pours another cup of coffee from the moka pot that’s steaming in the ash at the edge of the fire and pats the ground beside him. He’s sitting on Steve’s spread-out towel, and he scoots over to give Steve half of it.</p><p>“How long have you been up?”</p><p>“Half an hour. Not long.”</p><p>Steve takes a sip of his coffee. The moka pot produces a strong and bitter brew, but it’s perfect for a frosty morning in an open field in front of a fire. He leans over and bumps Bucky with his shoulder. “See, what did I tell you? You didn’t try to kill me in my sleep.”</p><p>Bucky’s mouth turns up in half a smile, but he looks thoughtful. “Nope. In fact, I didn’t wake up at all, I don’t think.”</p>
<hr/><p>They spend another day hiking and go home the day after. That evening, during debriefing, Steve says, “Hey, you slept really well in the tent, right?”</p><p>“Uh huh.” Bucky’s breath is warm on Steve’s neck. Sometimes he keeps his head on Steve’s shoulder for so long that the vapor in his breath makes a damp patch on Steve’s collar. It’s kind of gross, but something in Steve kind of likes it, too; it’s endearing, like holding a child’s sticky hand.</p><p>“So, I was thinking, maybe you slept better because there was somebody else with you? Like when you’re having a nightmare and I come sit by your bed. That helps you fall asleep quicker, right?”</p><p>Bucky hesitates a little before he says, “Yeah?”</p><p>“Okay. Um.” Steve feels strangely tentative, although when he’d thought this conversation through on the drive back to Brooklyn, it had seemed like the logical conclusion, a totally obvious solution to their sleeping issues, and not anything out of the ordinary, given their history. But now, back in the house, with their two different beds in their two different rooms behind two different doors, it seems less obvious, more strange.</p><p>“So, what if we kept sleeping in the same bed?” Bucky’s shoulders immediately tense up and his breathing turns shallow, like he’s almost holding it in. Steve can hear his quickening heartbeat, almost drowned out by the answering <em>rat-a-tat </em>of his own heartbeat in his ears.</p><p>“I mean… I just mean that if we slept in the same bed, we might both sleep better. You know, like we did when we lived together before you left for the army and then all the times during the war when we shared a tent? Not like it’s without precedent.”</p><p>He forces laughs, but it rings hollow. <em>Jesus, why is this so weird</em>?</p><p>There’s a long, long pause. Long enough that Bucky could have fallen asleep, if it weren’t for the rigid set of his back under Steve’s hand and the rapid rush of his heart. Finally, Steve can’t take the suspense anymore. He pushes back on Bucky’s shoulders until he can see his face. Bucky makes eye contact, but his expression is unreadable. There’s something behind his eyes that Steve can see, but can’t parse, like the shape of a big thing seen through a thick fog. Steve feels, for a moment, like he is holding a slip of paper with a password written in a script he doesn’t know. The key is there, but he doesn’t know how to grasp it, and each time he tries it just slips through his fingers like so much sand.</p><p>Finally, Bucky moves back half a step, sliding his hands off of Steve’s back and shoving them straight-armed into his pockets. “I don’t think I can do that.”</p><p>Steve’s still got his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, so he squeezes them both. “No worries, Buck, no pressure, I didn’t want to make it weird. It was just a suggestion. If you prefer your own bed in your own room that’s fine. No, that’s perfect. Everything can just stay the way it is now. Nothing has to change.”</p><p>Bucky looks down at their feet, toes pointed at each other like two sets of arrows. He smiles, but his lips are pursed. He looks… rueful. Almost sad.</p><p>“It was one thing in the tent. But, just… lemme think about it, okay?”</p><p>“Yeah, of course,” Steve says, almost tripping over himself in a rush to reassure him. “Like I said, no pressure at all. It was just an idea. Forget I said anything. If you want to.”</p><p>Bucky looks him in the eye again and smiles. It’s small, but it’s genuine. “Thanks for having my back, Steve.”</p><p>“Yeah, of course.” He almost adds <em>I’m with you ‘til the end of the line</em>, but bites it back at the last moment. For some reason, it feels like a step too far.</p>
<hr/><p>On Easter, the day before Steve goes back to work, he wakes up jittery and just gets worse as the morning wears on, a combination of nerves and excitement and dread. By lunchtime, Bucky can’t handle it anymore, so he goes for a walk by himself and comes back with two little chocolate rabbits. “Here, this is to commemorate the day of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior blah blah blah and Steve Rogers and James Barnes because we’ve both been brought back from the dead, too.” Steve laughs, a little shocked, still unable to shake his Catholic fear of blasphemy after so many years of nonbelief.</p><p>He savors his rabbit all afternoon, though, peeling back the foil bit by bit and eating it nibble by nibble until it’s gone.</p><p>When he wakes up the next morning, it’s still dark in his bedroom. His eyes feel gritty, and he rubs them with a knuckle while he picks up his phone. It’s a quarter past five. “Fuck,” he groans. His alarm is set for six o’clock, and an extra forty-five minutes of sleep wouldn’t usually make a difference to him, but he’d tossed and turned until Bucky had a nightmare, and then he had laid in bed afterwards staring at the ceiling until, he guesses, about an hour ago. <em>Oh well, might as well get up and get it over with</em>.</p><p>It’s not until he gets to the bottom of the stairs that he realizes there’s a light on in the kitchen, and when he turns the corner, he sees Bucky sitting cross-legged on the counter with a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.</p><p>“What’re you doing up so early?” Steve asks, the question mangled by a jaw-cracking yawn.</p><p>“Might ask you the same thing.”</p><p>Steve walks over to the coffee maker and pours himself a cup. Bucky pushes the milk down the counter toward him.</p><p>Steve looks out the window over the sink, into the dark garden washed in shades of grey and black. There’s a big pile of lumber for the garden beds in the middle of the yard, but it’s just an amorphous lump in what’s left of the night. The sky over the houses behind theirs is starting to turn from jet to navy, and he can just pick out the outline of a cloud low on the horizon.</p><p>“First day jitters,” Bucky says behind him. He leans over and squeezes Steve’s shoulder, then hops off the counter and opens the refrigerator door. “How about you go take a shower and I’ll make pancakes?”</p><p>“Oh, just lemme do it,” Steve says automatically, without even thinking about it. “I’ve got time.”</p><p>Bucky closes the refrigerator door with a little more force than necessary, but when Steve turns around, he doesn’t look irritated, just soft with residual sleep and the quiet smile that seems to be perpetually on his face, nowadays. But when he says, “No, Steve,” there’s a little hardness that creeps into his voice, a cloud of wool roving with a ball bearing inside. “Let <em>me</em> do it. Let <em>me</em> take care of you, for once. Let <em>me</em> make the pancakes while you take a hot shower.”</p><p>Steve opens his mouth to say something, anything, one of a hundred different things that all boil down to a petulant, <em>But that’s <span class="u">my</span> job</em>, but there’s something stiff in the line of Bucky’s back as he turns around and reaches up to unhook the griddle from the pot rack that makes him think twice. <em>Maybe… maybe just this once I can give in.</em></p><p>And then, as soon as he thinks that, he’s blindsided by a feeling he can’t define; it’s not exactly relief or gratitude or joy, it’s something nameless, impossible to pin down. But…</p><p>“Sure, Buck. Sounds perfect,” he says, and is surprised to find that he means it all the way down to his toes.</p>
<hr/><p>He takes the bike to the Tower, and once he’s parked in Tony’s garage, he finds his hand reaching for his phone and calling Bucky without any conscious input on his part.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Uh, hey. How’s everything?” He fiddles nervously with his keys, worrying the little leather tab he uses as a keychain between his thumb and forefinger.</p><p>“Jesus, Steve, you just left an hour ago. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Haven’t burned the house down yet.” Bucky sounds amused and—what else?—a little exasperated.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Steve asks, and immediately pulls a painful grimace. He sounds like he’s talking to phone sex operator or something. <em>Get it together,</em> he tells himself. <em>You’re pathetic</em>. Immediately he can see Dr. Castaño’s face in his mind’s eye, frowning at him, and he almost throws his keys against the pitted cement wall of the parking garage in frustration.</p><p>“Sitting in the armchair reading, exactly what I was doing when you left.”</p><p>“Sorry, I know. I didn’t even mean to call you, I think my hand just dialed all by itself.” Steve scrubs his free hand over his face. “This is more about me than you.”</p><p>“Yeah, Stevie, I know.” His voice is soft and understanding. Bucky knows him so well, maybe knows him better than Steve knows himself, he sometimes thinks.</p><p>“Oh, but I did forget to tell you,” Steve says, twirling the keys around his finger. “I left some money in an envelope in the sideboard for you just in case you need milk or anything. In the drawer with the napkins. I’m trying to get you put on my bank account, but since you’re legally dead, it’s a little difficult.”</p><p>Bucky hums; he sounds intrigued. “I’m legally dead? This opens all sorts of doors.”</p><p>Steve laughs out loud, his sour mood suddenly evaporated like so much mist on a hot spring morning. “Okay, that sounds shifty. Anyway, gotta go. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”</p><p>“Okay, got it,” Bucky says decisively. “Don’t do anything smart. It’s a lot to ask of a man, but I can handle it.”</p><p>“Jerk.”</p><p>“Punk.”</p>
<hr/><p>[Bucky]: $1000 ??????</p><p>[Bucky]: Steven</p><p>[Bucky]: I know the neighborhood’s gentrifying but a gallon of milk costs like 4 bucks</p><p>[Steve]: I know that, jeez, but what if you need something else more expensive?</p><p>[Bucky]: like Louboutins??????</p><p>[Steve]: I don’t know what that is.</p><p>[Steve]: Anyway, buy whatever you need, there’s more money where that came from.</p><p>[Bucky]: Oh that’s right you’re rich I forgot</p><p>[Bucky]: I’m rich too fyi</p><p>[Bucky]: It’s just buried in central park somewhere</p><p>[Bucky]: When I remember where I’ll pay you back</p><p>[Steve]: Don’t even think about it. You never have to pay me back. I got it.</p><p>[Bucky]: I know, you gave me the mi casa es su casa speech already</p><p>[Bucky]: Thanks</p><p>[Steve]: I still don’t speak Spanish, jerk</p><p>[Bucky]: Okay but you should know that one through cultural osmosis</p><p>[Steve]: Big words for a man who said he wasn’t gonna do anything smart today</p><p>[Bucky]: &gt;:(</p>
<hr/><p>The first two days that Steve is back on active duty go reasonably well. He spends most of the day at the Tower, training with the rest of the Avengers and getting back up to speed. They tease him about going soft, and it’s true, he has lost a little ground in the last three months. But it also feels so good to get back to fighting. He had missed it, so much more than he’d thought he had.</p><p>It’s different than running; it’s not just the workout, it’s the tactics, the calculations, the headspace it gets him into. The feeling of his fist connecting with something that gives, the sheer satisfaction of getting a good hit in. Nat and Thor each wipe the floor with him and give him a black eye and a split lip between them, but he feels giddy and jumped up afterward. He almost asks them to go another round, two against one, but then Jarvis’s voice floats down from the ceiling to remind them that they’re late for a meeting with Maria Hill.</p><p>The jumped-up, buzzing feeling inside his chest carries him through the rest of the day, and on the ride home that afternoon, he thinks about asking Bucky if he wants to spar. He’s not sure how to broach the subject, or if it would even be a good idea; the last time they’d fought had been on the helicarrier, and Bucky had almost killed him. He’s not worried about Bucky hurting him now, but he’s afraid that even mentioning sparring would hurt Bucky in other ways, and hurt him more than it could help Steve.</p><p>And in the end, he’s right. When he gets home, he drops his gear bag in the front hall, toes his shoes off, and walks through the kitchen to the garden, where he can hear hammering. He looks through the window over the sink before he opens the door and sees Bucky with a hammer in his metal hand and half a dozen nails sticking out of his mouth, crouched over a half-finished rectangular garden bed. The rest of the yard is full of finished beds set out in a neat grid and the pile of lumber is substantially smaller.</p><p>He opens the screen door and says, “Hey! Nice work!” Bucky looks up with a grin stretching around the nails between his lips, but it vanishes as soon as he takes in Steve’s face, his split lip and black eye, nasty-looking but fading fast.</p><p>He drops the hammer and the nails go flying as he vaults over the half-finished bed and takes the three stairs to the deck in one leap. He grabs Steve’s chin with his metal fingers, not softly but not painfully, either, and turns it so that he can look at Steve’s eye.</p><p>“What the fuck happened to you?” he growls. Something flutters in Steve’s stomach, that little thrill of adrenaline that feels like a jolt of fear, though he knows that it’s not.</p><p>“Uh, just sparring, Buck. With Nat and Thor. It’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.” He can hear the loud echo of Bucky’s heartbeat in the handbreadth of space between them, and there’s a dark, fractured look in his eyes like a crack in the face of a smooth, hard stone.</p><p>Bucky’s scowling and something like grief crosses his face, a bestial shadow, the opposite of a spark. He reaches up with his human fingers and touches the swelling around Steve’s eye, so softly that Steve hardly feels it. Then his hand skims further down Steve’s cheek and he trails his forefinger down the split in his bottom lip. He still has Steve’s chin in the hard-soft grasp of his metal hand.</p><p>Steve stops breathing.</p><p>After what feels like an eternity, Bucky shakes himself like he’s coming out of a trance. His lip curls and he growls again, “I don’t like it.” He shoves Steve’s chin roughly to the side and stalks into the house, the screen door banging behind him.</p><p>Steve leans both hands on the railing, trying to catch his breath. He’s dizzy, his head spinning like he’s caught in a whirlpool. Every color in the backyard bursts out more vibrant and electric, the green grass almost fluorescent. <em>What the fuck.</em> There’s a fluttery thrill in his gut and a tingling up and down his spine, but he feels the ghost of Bucky’s hand shoving his face to the side again and the tingling morphs into a hot twist of anger.</p><p>He flings the screen door open hard enough that it slams against the wall. Bucky is standing at the sink, washing his hands. He doesn’t look up when Steve tears into the kitchen, but his mouth turns down at the edges.</p><p>“Now look,” Steve starts, but Bucky cuts him off: “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Steve is left standing in the doorway, leaning forward with his momentum, one finger pointed at Bucky’s chest.</p><p>“Oh. Ah. Okay?”</p><p>Bucky grabs the red checkered dish towel from the oven door and dries his hands off. He’s still not looking at Steve, his back a hard, tense line turned toward the door.</p><p>“It’s not my place to get bent out of shape about it. I know it’s part of your job and I know it’s gonna disappear in no time. And… and I know you’re probably gonna come back some day with worse.” His shoulders are encroaching on his ears, and he’s twisting the dish towel so harshly between his hands that Steve’s afraid he’s going to rip it in half. “That’s just something I’ve gotta deal with, but it’s mine to deal with myself. It’s not your problem.”</p><p>“Yes, it is,” Steve says with conviction. Bucky’s shoulders tense even further. “Your problems are my problems. If you have a problem, we try to solve it together. If seeing me like this makes you upset, I’ll wear a helmet when I’m sparring. Easy as pie.”</p><p>Steve can see the muscle working in the back of Bucky’s jaw as he clenches his teeth. After a minute he says, his voice steady enough, “That’s real sweet of you, Steve, but it doesn’t always work like that. There are some things you can’t help me with. That you shouldn’t help me with. Wearing a helmet may keep you from getting your pretty little face scratched up, but it’s just a band-aid, and this?” He taps his metal fingers to his temple, his back still to Steve. “This is a gunshot wound.”</p><p>He turns around, then, and looks Steve in the eye, and Steve can see that he’s upset, but resigned. “You remember just as well as I do where we were the last time I saw you looking like that.”</p><p>“Yeah. I do,” Steve says softly. “Sorry.”</p><p>Now, Bucky looks disgusted. He stalks over to Steve and pokes him in the chest with his metal forefinger. It feels like a brand, the dull sting of it over Steve’s heart persisting for far longer than it should. “Don’t you apologize to me, jerk. I could spend the rest of my life saying sorry to you and it wouldn’t hardly make me feel any better, so don’t start tipping the scales even farther in your direction.”</p><p>Then he sighs and folds the dish towel neatly, turning around to hang it back on the oven door. “Just let me work it out in therapy, which is the only way I’m ever gonna get to a place where I’m okay with this.” He waves his hand at Steve’s face. “I mean, I’m never gonna be okay with you getting hurt. But maybe someday I can see you with a black eye and be mad at the other guy and not at myself.”</p><p>There’s a sudden lump in Steve’s throat, and he swallows around it and steps forward, arms out, wanting to catch Bucky in a hug, but Bucky slips out of his way and walks out the kitchen door. “I need to call Dr. Zaidi,” he says from the hallway. “There’s boeuf bourguignon defrosting in the oven, could you make some buttered egg noodles to go with it? I’ll be down by the time you’re done.”</p><p>Steve’s left staring at the empty doorway. “Okay,” he says to the empty air and to the soft pad of Bucky’s feet as he goes up the staircase. And then, in a whisper, to himself, “I’m sorry anyway.”</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later, Steve is in Dr. Castaño’s office, slouched down in the comfortable armchair in front of her desk, his long legs kicked out in front of him. The radiators in this building are still the old kind, not new electric ones like his own, and they go <em>clink-clank</em> every once in a while, in a friendly, soothing way.</p><p>“I’m afraid that I’m hurting him,” Steve says, “by continuing to do Avengers stuff.”</p><p>“Hurting him in what way?” Dr. Castaño is looking at him over the top of her notebook. She has long pepper-black hair pulled up into a neat bun on the crown of her head and Steve thinks she’s probably in her late forties, but it’s not like he’s going to ask. She dresses like she’s younger than he is, and today she’s got on converse and a pair of black skinny jeans, a blue-and-white striped boatneck top, and a pair of gigantic glasses with thin orange frames that dwarf her small, heart-shaped face. There’s a tattoo poking out of the sleeve of her shirt, something botanical, that Steve has yet to work up the courage to ask about.</p><p>He looks at the books behind her head, running his eyes over the titles without really reading any of them. “He was really upset the other day when I came home with a black eye and a split lip.”</p><p>“Why was he upset?” Her voice is a little gravelly, like she smoked too many unfiltered cigarettes as a young adult, but she’s very no-nonsense, and he takes a lot of comfort in that.</p><p>“Because it reminded him of when he fought me on the helicarrier. And he still feels really guilty about that.”</p><p>“Was that the only reason why he was upset?” Steve frowns at her. “Could he not also be upset because he cares about you and doesn’t want to see you hurt?”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he says, because it’s obvious. “But it’s my job.” He crosses his feet at the ankles and starts to jiggle the foot on top. “It’s not exactly fair to expect me to come home in pristine condition when my job is literally fighting all day.”</p><p>“I won’t disagree with that. But imagine that your situations were reversed. How would you feel if he came home one day with a black eye and a split lip?”</p><p>Steve bristles immediately, sitting up straight in the chair and clenching his fists, his hackles going up like a fighting dog waiting to be let loose in the ring. “I’d hate it.”</p><p>“Well, that’s not exactly fair, is it? To expect a different reaction from him?” She raises an eyebrow and Steve sighs.</p><p>“No, no, it’s… no,” he admits easily. “But I don’t know what to do.” He cracks all the knuckles on his left hand. Dr. Castaño opens a drawer in her desk and tosses him a little cube with a knobby wheel on one side that she’d found for him after he had destroyed half a dozen of her stress balls by squeezing them too hard. It makes a satisfying, muted <em>click-click-click</em> as he runs the dial under his thumb.</p><p>“What do you want to do?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” <em>Click-click-click</em> goes the wheel. “Really, I don’t. I’ve thought about it a little but there’s no clear path.”</p><p>“Do you want to keep being an Avenger?”</p><p>Steve’s mind goes back to that day he visited Bucky at SHIELD headquarters, last Thanksgiving, when he’d thought for the first time about maybe doing something else. He had been blindsided by the idea in a way that had baffled him at the time and was, today, hardly any clearer. “I… I don’t know.”</p><p>“Would you miss it if you couldn’t be an Avenger anymore?”</p><p>“Yes!” That’s his automatic reaction. But he can recognize the little nagging doubt that’s there underneath, the crack in the façade of his resolve. <em>Click click click. </em>“I don’t know.”</p><p>“What is it that you like about your job?”</p><p>This is an easy question to answer. “I like helping people. I like keeping people safe. I like doing good.”</p><p>“You could do all of those things in another line of work.”</p><p>“Yeah, but I also…” Steve takes a deep breath, holds it for a few seconds, and lets it out again, slowly. “I also like fighting. There’s something about it that makes me feel really good. I’m not… I’m not a violent person. At least, I don’t think I am. I’m not prone to violence. But when I fight, no matter if it’s just training, or even if it’s just working the punching bag over, I feel… clean.”</p><p>“What else do you feel?”</p><p>“Exhilarated. Fighting is fun. I mean, sometimes it’s not fun, especially on missions. But the days that we have training melees, all of the Avengers fighting together, those are my favorite days.” <em>Click click click.</em></p><p>“How do you feel when you get hurt?”</p><p>Steve laughs.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” He looks up from where he’s got his eyes fixed on his shoes. Dr. Castaño is smiling at him, quietly amused.</p><p>“Buck told me one time back in 1943 when he found me getting the snot kicked out of me in an alley that he thought I liked getting punched.”</p><p>“Is it true?”</p><p>Steve thinks about it for a very long minute. The little wheel goes<em> click click click</em>. It feels like the ridged edge of a seashell under his thumb, the muted <em>click </em>the distant snap of a castanet.</p><p>“Maybe…” he finally says. “I don’t know. There’s something satisfying about it, the sting, and the ache that comes after. I don’t mean getting really hurt, not like the way I was hurt after Insight Day. That was the worst I’ve ever been hurt since I got the serum. If you don’t count the ice.”</p><p>“Why do you think you find pain so satisfying?”</p><p>Steve frowns down at his shoes again, beat-up old Nikes, and scuffs the heels back and forth against the chummy wooden floor. “I don’t know that it’s the pain, exactly. I don’t seek out pain. But getting a black eye while sparring, it’s the same feeling for me as when my muscles ache when I run too far. Like… like I’ve pushed myself far enough that I’ve accomplished something and I can finally rest.”</p><p>“How often do you actually rest?”</p><p>Steve can feel furrow appear between his brows. Rest is just the five-to-eight hours he snatches in bed at night, if his nightmares or Bucky’s nightmares don’t wake him up. But he knows that’s not what she’s talking about. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean,” Dr. Castaño says, quirking an eyebrow at him again, “how often do you just let yourself sit down and do nothing? Stare off into space, let your mind off its leash?</p><p>“Not… not often,” Steve says.</p><p>“How often?”</p><p>He actually takes a moment to think about it. “Never. My body demands a lot of movement, exercise. I can’t really rest because it’s always pushing me to go, go, go.”</p><p>“But I’m not talking about your body, Steve. I’m talking about resting your mind.”</p><p>Steve chews on his bottom lip, clicks the wheel through half a dozen revolutions before he answers. “I… I’ve started painting again.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s great news!” Dr. Castaño exclaims. “I’m glad to hear that.”</p><p>“Yeah, so that’s… that helps me rest, kind of. In the way that you’re talking about. And I rest when I’m watching a movie, or reading. Or cooking.”</p><p>“Do you do those things alone?” He looks up and meets her eye, but she’s impassive, receptive, just waiting for an answer.</p><p>“No, no. With Bucky. Always with Bucky. It’s difficult to rest my mind when I’m alone.”</p><p>“So he grounds you.”</p><p>“Yeah… yes. I’m… I’ve been doing so much better since he came to live with me. In… in everything. Haven’t you noticed?”</p><p>Dr. Castaño nods and gives him a soft smile. “Yes, I have. So you think he is good for you?”</p><p>“Oh yeah, yes, of course.” He doesn’t even need to think about it.</p><p>“And are you good for him?”</p><p>Steve sinks down into himself a little, deflating. He can feel his face falling, but Dr. Castaño doesn’t look at him; she’s writing something in her notebook, or doodling, or maybe just dragging the pencil in loops over the paper while she gives him some time and the illusion of privacy in which to think.</p><p>“I don’t know. I hope so. I really, really hope so. But we’re back to where we started, aren’t we? That I’m afraid I’m hurting him by getting hurt.”</p><p>“Well, are you?”</p><p>“Yeah, I guess I am. Yeah. But I don’t know what to do about it.” He realizes he’s squeezing the little cube in his hand hard enough that he can feel the plastic starting to give. He tosses it back onto Dr. Castaño’s desk before he forgets himself and actually breaks it, too.</p><p>“Well,” she says, “I don’t think you have to do anything right now but think about it. And maybe you don’t have to do anything at all. Being in a relationship is all about give and take, you know. Maybe this is an area in which he has to give.”</p><p>Steve somehow manages to scoff and gape at the same time like a freshly-noodled catfish. “We’re not… we… we’re not in a <em>relationship</em>!”</p><p>Dr. Castaño grins. “Steve, you’re blushing.”</p><p>“I fucking know I’m blushing,” he grits out between clenched teeth, though he can’t help but grin at her gentle teasing. “But we’re not.”</p><p>“You don’t have to be romantically involved with someone to be in a relationship. Or, if you prefer, to <em>have</em> a relationship. And you have to admit that your two lives are just as intertwined as those of many couples who have been married for years.”</p><p>“Fuck.” He scrubs both hands over his face and then through his hair, which sticks out wildly from the sides of his head. “You’re right. I know. It’s just…. I don’t know.”</p><p>She waves her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. What I wanted to say was that you both have to make sacrifices for each other and maybe this is one of the sacrifices that <em>he</em> has to make.”</p><p>Steve huffs out a sigh. “Or maybe it’s the sacrifice I have to make, instead.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Dr. Castaño says, as mild as can be. “Maybe.”</p>
<hr/><p>The weekend after he goes back on active duty, there’s an emergency in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that turns into a five-day away mission. It’s the weekend after Easter, prime spring break time, when a portal opens and something gelatinous and tentacular falls out onto the boardwalk. Right in front of a thousand families in neon beachwear, teenagers in knock-off Oakley sunglasses and board shorts, and all of the East Coast’s finest custom airbrush t-shirt vendors.</p><p>It’s alive and it’s ugly and somehow it multiplies, and that’s all the Avengers know about it. It takes them from Wednesday to Sunday to kill all iterations of… whatever it was… close the portal, and clean up the worst of the mess. They get home on Sunday night, tired, sunburnt, and full of sand. Steve texts Bucky from the airport.</p><p>[Steve]: Just landed, taking a car home so that I don’t have to go pick up the bike in Manhattan. ETA 40 min.</p><p>[Bucky]: Okay</p><p>[Bucky]: Steak and baked potatoes for dinner</p><p>[Bucky]: Hope yr hungry</p><p>[Steve]: Holy shit!!! I am starving and steak sounds amazing, you’re the best!! Mwah</p><p>He spends the next forty minutes checking his phone, but there’s no reply.</p>
<hr/><p>When he walks in the front door, Bucky barrels out of the kitchen and almost knocks him down. He crushes Steve in his arms, but before he can drop his bags and return the hug, Bucky has already stepped back and is running his hands all over Steve’s uniform looking for damage.</p><p>“Jeez, Buck, nice to see you too,” Steve laughs, pleased at the reception, and pushes his questing hands away. “I’m fine, nothing but a few scratches and a nasty sunburn that’s already gone.”</p><p>Bucky peers at his face and tentatively puts his hand up like he’s going to touch Steve again, and Steve feels something in himself sway forward, leaning into the ghost touch. But then Bucky pauses and puts his hand back down. “Yeah, you got a bunch of new freckles.” Then his look turns harder. “Are you sure you’re fine?”</p><p>“Yes, I’m sure. I couldn’t do much fighting anyway. The thing from the portal was like a wobbly jell-o, my shield went right through it without doing much damage. I mostly stuck to crowd control and clean-up.”</p><p>Bucky heaves a sigh. He looks pretty rough, now that Steve can really examine him. His clothes are clean and his hair is combed, but it’s lank and dull. He’s got circles under his eyes the color of old paint brush water and he looks like he hasn’t been sleeping or eating or doing much of anything in Steve’s absence.</p><p>Steve drops his bags and puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, and he knows that his face must be doing something bad because the familiar divot of worry appears between Bucky’s eyebrows. “Listen, we should have gone over this before I left, and I’m sorry we didn’t. But if I ever get hurt, you’ll be the first to know. Just like I told you back at SHIELD, I swear you’ll never be left in the dark. There’s a family protocol in place and everything, all official. So no news is good news, buddy, and if I’m texting you about all the stupid shit we’ve been texting about for the last five days, it means that everything is fine. I’d never hide anything from you, okay?”</p><p>Bucky looks down at his feet, but he nods. “I know, and if you didn’t tell me about something important, Natasha would have ratted you out. I worry anyway, though.” He sways a little on his feet; he looks exhausted.</p><p>Steve narrows his eyes. “Have you slept at all since I’ve been gone?”</p><p>Bucky shrugs.</p><p>Steve hums disapprovingly and purses his lips. “Okay. I’m gonna make the steaks myself while you go take a shower. And then straight to bed, do not pass go...”</p><p>“Do not collect two hundred dollars,” Bucky finishes, and gives a small laugh. “Okay, okay. You’ve still got your mission face on, no use arguing, I guess.”</p><p>“Nope. Go.”</p><p>On a hunch, he turns off the oven and puts the paper-wrapped steaks he finds on the counter back in the fridge, then takes out a beer for himself and sits down to nurse it at the dining table. After five minutes, he tiptoes upstairs and quietly opens the door to Bucky’s bedroom. Sure enough, Bucky is passed out face down on the bed, on top of the duvet, his metal arm crooked uncomfortably underneath him and his feet hanging off the side. Steve tries to pull the covers out from under him as gently as possible, but Bucky wakes up and flails around for a second before he pushes himself to his feet and mumbles, “Sorry, sorry, just fell asleep for a second.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah. Time for bed, kiddo. Go brush your teeth and I’ll get you some pajamas.”</p><p>“Don’ call me kiddo, I’m older’n you,” Bucky slurs, swaying toward the doorway. Steve catches hold of his elbow to steady him but then almost knocks him down when Bucky stops abruptly in the middle of the hall and says, “Hey, what about dinner?”</p><p>“I’m tired, you’re dead on your feet, the steaks will keep ‘til tomorrow. I’ve got the day off tomorrow, anyway, so I don’t have to go into Manhattan. We can do whatever you want.”</p><p>Bucky yawns enormously, the joint of his jaw cracking. “I wanted you to have a really nice welcome-back dinner, but I guess it’s fine.”</p><p>He stumbles into the bathroom to brush his teeth and then back into his bedroom, where Steve brings him pajamas. “Clean, can’t be helped, sorry. You don’t wanna wear my mission pajamas, believe me.”</p><p>Bucky frowns but says, “I’m so tired I bet my subconscious won’t even notice.” He pulls off his jeans right in front of Steve and pulls on the pajama pants with the air of a drunk man trying to walk a straight line. Then he slips under the duvet that Steve holds up for him and nuzzles his face into his pillow. “But if I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, you go ahead and bring me those mission pajamas. I don’t care how rank they are.”</p><p>“Uh, sure,” Steve says, a little mystified. But Bucky is already asleep.</p><p>He does wake up in the middle of the night, and Steve does bring him his mission pajamas, hems full of sand and smelling like old sweat and dead hotel air. Bucky just shoves them under his pillow, rolls over, and goes straight back to sleep.</p>
<hr/><p>The next two weeks pass in a whirlwind of training and meetings.</p><p>Steve throws himself back into training with a vengeance, thinking the whole time about his conversation with Dr. Castaño. <em>Fighting is fun.</em> <em>But is it worth it?</em> that little voice asks in the back of his mind. It’s not Dr. Castaño’s voice; it sounds suspiciously like his own self. He decides that he’s going to start wearing a faceguard when he spars, no matter what Bucky may have said about it.</p><p>Clint, of course, takes one look at him when he walks onto the mat and starts teasing. “Aww, Steve, are you afraid that Nat’s gonna ruin your pretty face?”</p><p>Steve rolls his eyes and tsks. “No, but if I come home with bruises, Bucky gets upset.”</p><p>Natasha and Clint exchange a look. “Ah. He gets upset,” Natasha says, cocking an eyebrow.</p><p>“Don’t give me that bullshit.” Steve barks. “You remember where we were the last time he saw me with a battered face.”</p><p>Natasha purses her lips and Clint grimaces.</p><p>“Exactly. So, I’m wearing the guard. Try not to break my nose if you can help it.”</p><p>“Sure,” Natasha says, and stamps her foot twice on the mat like a sumo wrestler. “I’ll make up for it with nut shots.”</p><p>“Oh ho, and is your boyfriend gonna be upset about <em>that?</em>” Clint crows from his perch on the rock-climbing wall.</p><p>Steve splutters, “He’s not my boyfriend!” while they crack up. He gives them both the middle finger and spins into a roundhouse kick, but his foot connects with the empty air because Natasha is already sweeping her leg to take him out at the ankle. As he goes down with a thud that reverberates around the gym, she says smugly, “You were right, Clint, teasing him about his love life is a <em>great</em> distraction tactic. I owe you five bucks.”</p><p>Steve covers his face with his hands and groans.</p>
<hr/><p>There are only two more out-of-state missions before the end of the month, and only one of them keeps him away for more than one night. Bucky seems less out of sorts when he returns, more like his normal self, but Steve knows that he’s probably making an extra effort to look presentable in order to make <em>Steve</em> feel better, and there’s no guarantee that he actually does any better when Steve isn’t around to look stricken about it.</p><p>Bucky, for his part, has thrown himself into garden preparations. Every time Steve comes home from Manhattan in the afternoon, it seems like there’s something new to look at. The first thing he does is shore up the flower beds around the perimeter of the backyard with new boards and fill them in with dirt. Then he plants radishes, beets, carrots, and spinach. He finishes building the rectangular garden beds that are going in the center of the backyard and fills them with dirt, too. He moves some of his seedlings out to the greenhouse to be hardened off, and every other day he rearranges the ones that are monopolizing the floorspace in the studio and the sideboard in the dining room so that they don’t get leggy.</p><p>Steve likes plants because they’re pretty, but he’s mostly interested in the garden for the way that it makes Bucky’s face light up when he talks about it. If Bucky’s in the garden when Steve gets back from the Tower, he goes out as soon as he changes his clothes and asks for an update just so that he can see Bucky’s face light up, and to soak in the bright and sunny zest that has him waving his hands and striding around the backyard like the lead architect on a very important project.</p><p>Sometimes the garden goes unchanged for a few days, but that’s because Bucky’s been putting in extra time at the community garden where he volunteers, or has embarked on some other project inside the house, or maybe because he just decides to go for a walk and then stays out all morning without realizing it.</p><p>Slowly but surely, without Steve really noticing, Bucky has turned into himself. He’s not exactly the Bucky that Steve remembers from before the war; he’s softer, more prone to bouts of melancholy, reticence, or even shyness. Bucky before the war had been brash and joyfully impetuous, always bubbling over with goodwill and amiability, but cocky, supremely confident in his ability to charm anyone and everyone.</p><p>But Steve thinks about it a little more, turning it over in his mind until after a while he comes to the conclusion that maybe Bucky’s not actually so different from his pre-war self. There were times, especially after they started living together and Steve was privy to Bucky’s most unguarded moments, when he would turn the bright harlequin cape of his personality over to reveal the softer and quieter things hidden carefully underneath.</p><p>Those were the times when he cried at the movies, when he woke up from a bad dream and clung to Steve like a shipwrecked man to a splintered life raft, when he let himself be sad because a girl had thrown him over, when he worried about his sisters, when he let Steve glimpse, like the flicker of a candle at the end of a long, dark passage, just how desperately he needed to be loved.</p><p>Steve is sitting on the back steps, now, at the tail end of the afternoon, drinking a mug of tea and watching Bucky plant baby lettuces around the perimeter of the garden bed closest to the house. He’s wearing Steve’s raggedy green hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and he’s got his legs folded up under him, sitting on his feet. He’s humming something to himself that Steve can’t make out, and the fiery glow of the setting sun reflected from the houses on the other side of the garden wall makes him look like he’s been dipped in egg yolk, golden orange and slick with good fat.</p><p>There is a chill in the air, now that the sun is going down, and Steve tightens his hands around the mug, trying to guard its warmth for a minute more. “When are you going to plant the tomatoes?” he says, whining a little, hamming it up. “I want tomatoes.”</p><p>Bucky huffs a sigh, faux-irritated, and then looks back over his shoulder, his grin a brilliant white in the soft gold of his face. “Middle of May, Stevie,” he says. Then he cocks his head and asks, “Happy?” and turns back around to the bed.</p><p>There are only a few lettuces left to plant. Soon, he’ll stand up, his knees cracking and popping, dust his hands on his thighs, and come over to the steps, nudging Steve over so that he can sit down next to him. They’ll look over the garden, each satisfied for their own separate reasons, and then when the sun finally sets all the way, they’ll go inside and make something for dinner, together.</p><p>Steve knows it was a joke, that <em>Happy?</em> But he is, he’s wonderfully, violently happy. “Yeah,” he says, to the strong, receptive line of Bucky’s back, to the plants that are throwing their leaves up to catch the last of the sun, to the garden and New York and the world at large. “Yeah, I am.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*GASP* <em>THERE WAS ONLY ONE TENT</em></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot">This</a> is a moka pot.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. May</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The weather turns hot in the first week of May, unseasonably hot for a day or two before it drops back down into normal late-spring temperatures. It’s not yet midsummer-hot, but the sun shines relentlessly down on Steve as he drives across the bridge from Manhattan in the midafternoon, barely a breeze off of the water to cool him down when he’s stalled in traffic. His head is soaked under his helmet, and his hair is plastered damply to his forehead by the time he gets home. He walks straight through the house and through the open back door to the deck, where Bucky is sitting in the shade of the house with a glass of iced green tea.</p><p>“Oh hey,” he says happily, “I was just taking a break.”</p><p>Steve’s heart trips all over itself in his chest as he stares at Bucky, trying to collect his thoughts, as easy as collecting water in a sieve. They’ve been sharing the same spaces for four months, now, but it’s been four months of winter and early spring, and Bucky has spent most of that time bundled up in an endless parade of long-sleeved t-shirts and cardigans and hoodies and coats and blankets. They don’t, as a rule, change in front of each other; even when they went camping, Steve had wordlessly given Bucky the privacy of the tent to change in. It’s not that they’re embarrassed, it’s just common courtesy. Right? Right.</p><p>But it’s the first hot day all year, hot enough that Bucky forewent his t-shirt in the garden, and now, for the first time in seventy years, he is bare-chested in front of Steve. Steve’s heart, for some inexplicable reason, is still thump-thumping away like the little drummer boy gone wild, and he doesn’t know what to look at, because there is so much to take in.</p><p>For the very first time, he can see the metal arm all the way up to the shoulder. Bucky’s tac gear had left his arm exposed, but Steve hasn’t seen Bucky in the tac gear in more than a year, not since he almost died on the helicarriers, and he hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the design elements at the time.</p><p>Now, from just a couple of feet away, he can see the detailing, the fine grain of the metal, the way the plates overlap on the frankly terrifying metal bicep and deltoid and shift minutely as Bucky brings the glass up to his mouth. For the first time he sees the extensive scarring where the metal shoulder meets his torso. It looks painful, but old, a sickly pinkish white in stark contrast to the flushed, honey-colored skin of Bucky’s chest.</p><p>Which is the next thing that Steve notices, because <em>goddamn</em>. While Bucky was still in SHIELD Steve had bought him a bunch of free weights, but as far as he knew, they’d stayed unused under his bed with the dust bunnies. He’s never seen Bucky use them; he’d thought they’d been forgotten. But now Steve reconsiders, maybe he <em>has</em> been using them when Steve isn’t at home, because he has a torso that looks like it’s been sculpted from golden sandstone, and… that train of thought doesn’t get any farther down those tracks because, at that moment, Bucky notices him staring. A series of expressions pass over his face, first amusement, but when he realizes that Steve is staring at his arm, discomfort, distress, and then resignation.</p><p>“Not so normal, huh,” he says flatly, turning his head and looking away over the back fence.</p><p><em>Oh shit</em>.</p><p>Steve pulls another deck chair over and sits down on Bucky’s left side. His idiot heart calms down a little as soon as he has a mission, which in this case is to reassureBucky. “Normal, as in, normal for the general population, no. Of course not. But it’s normal for you. And you’re normal to me. And so the arm is normal to me. How could it not be?”</p><p>Bucky hums, skeptical, but Steve nudges him with his elbow and says, “I’d never really thought about how it was attached, actually. ‘Cause it’s just an arm, right? And I’ve never thought about how your other arm is attached, or mine, or Nat’s. That’s why I was staring. Which was impolite. So, sorry.”</p><p>Bucky lifts the glass of tea again and Steve, in spite of having just apologized for staring, watches in open fascination as the plates shift over each other. The sound they make, now that he’s really paying attention, isn’t metallic, per se, or at least it’s not the harsh scrape of metal against metal that he might have expected if he hadn’t been living with the arm for months, already. Rather, it’s an almost-imperceptible <em>hssh</em>, like the sound of a wire brush on the taut head of a snare drum. “Can I touch it?” Steve blurts out, and Bucky makes an inelegant snort of disbelief into his tea. He’s still looking out over the back fence, but his expression in profile is no longer hurt, just a little puzzled and a little amused.</p><p>“Steve, you touch it all the time.”</p><p>Steve can feel his neck getting hot, but he pushes on. “I don’t mean shoving you out of the way in the kitchen. I mean like, <em>touch it </em>touch it.”</p><p>Bucky glances over at him out of the corner of his eye, his brows furrowed. “Okaaayyy,” he says, drawing the end of the word out, and transfers the glass to his right hand.</p><p>Steve turns half around in his chair so that he’s facing Bucky and lays his palm against the metal forearm, right below the elbow. It’s warm, ambient temperature. “Make a fist,” he says, and feels the plates shift and expand under his hand, exactly as if Bucky’s muscles were bunching up under his skin. “Wow,” he says, under his breath, to himself.</p><p>He slides his hand around the back of Bucky’s elbow and pulls the arm onto his knees; Bucky lets it go lax, and it’s surprisingly heavy, far heavier than its counterpart. “Jesus, Bucky, this weighs a ton. Don’t you get sick of lugging it around?”</p><p>“It’s not like I can take it off, Steve.” He sounds tired. “Anyway, that’s why the rest of me looks like a prime specimen of Grade-A beef.” He waves his human hand up and down his bare torso and smirks, though Steve can see his heart’s not in it. “Gotta keep my strength up so that I’m proportionate and the arm doesn’t tear itself out of my spine.”</p><p>“Fuck,” Steve whispers. “Jesus christ.”</p><p>Bucky waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, Stevie. That’s old hat. What else do you want to know?”</p><p>“Uh,” Steve says. “Can you feel this?” He runs a finger from the open metal palm up the forearm to the crease between the metal bicep and the shoulder. Bucky gasps and gives a full-body shiver. The servos in the arm go z<em>zzing</em> and the metal fingers spasm into a fist, the soft <em>hssh</em> of the arms plates transmuted in the more delicate finger plates into something in a higher register, like the whine of a mosquito.</p><p>“Ah. Huh,” Steve says intelligently. The back of his neck feels hot enough to fry an egg on. “So you can feel that.”</p><p>“Yeah, of course,” Bucky says, his voice a little strained. “But don’t do that. It’s too much. Normally, it’s like the skin on the center of your back, you know? It’s not sensitive enough to register small, individual points of contact. Not like the skin on your face or your hand.” He reaches over with his human hand and touches the back of Steve’s wrist with two fingers, leaving behind two points of burning heat like two drops of candle wax when he pulls them away. Steve feels the urge to shiver, himself. “But it’s not the sensitivity that’s the problem. I don’t think my brain is calibrated to receive <em>that</em> kind of touch on the metal arm, so it amplifies the sensation. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but…” He trails off, his lips pursed, obviously unwilling or unable to talk about it.</p><p>“Okay.” Steve casts about for some way to change the subject and turns his metal hand over so that it’s lying palm-down. “Wiggle your fingers?”</p><p>Bucky drums his fingers on Steve’s thigh and Steve watches the tiny plates of his knuckles expand and contract. “They look too delicate to stand up to any kind of impact,” he says.</p><p>“They do, don’t they? But they can punch through just about anything.” Bucky sounds proud, and Steve’s heart warms a little more just to hear it.</p><p>He moves his hand up to Bucky’s bicep, squeezing hard, feeling the miniscule amount of give in the metal. Then he puts his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, palm hiding the fading red star and his forefinger on the seam where the metal meets skin. “Is… is this okay?” he asks, tentatively.</p><p>Bucky shrugs, the metal shoulder rising and falling beneath Steve’s hand. “I dunno. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone has ever touched any of this”—he raises his metal arm and wiggles it back and forth—“out of curiosity. As far as I can remember, it’s only ever been doctors or technicians or… or… whoever.” Steve can hear him grinding his teeth.</p><p>“Do you want me to stop?”</p><p>“No… no. Just.” He pauses, taking in a deep breath. Steve, mesmerized, watches the rise and fall of his ribs under the soft layer of skin and fat and muscle, so delicate-looking next to the blatant lethality of the arm. He registers distantly that Bucky’s heart has sped up, too, to match his own. “No. It’s okay.”</p><p>Steve lightly skims his thumb along the metal seam that’s bordered by the ridge of scar tissue. Bucky isn’t grinding his teeth anymore, but his jaw is clenched hard enough that Steve’s afraid he might crack a tooth. He pulls his hand away, strangely reluctant, and says, “Sorry, Buck, this is obviously too much.”</p><p>Bucky takes another deep breath, holds it for a second, and lets it out. “Nah, it’s okay. It’s not uncomfortable or painful. It’s just that nobody has ever touched the arm like that. I don’t think my brain knows what to do. The arm is like… it’s like a dog that’s only ever been kicked. It doesn’t know how to react to a friendly pat.” He darts a glance at Steve out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>Steve feels like he’s been kicked, himself. He recognizes the flare of helpless anger that springs up in his belly, the beginning of the <em>I’m gonna kill every motherfucker that ever touched him</em> death spiral, but he counts to ten and forces his brain to nip it in the bud. He gives Bucky a small smile and reaches up to squeeze the muscle that joins his shoulder to his neck. His skin is blood-hot under Steve’s hand and lightly damp with sweat, although they’ve been sitting on the deck for the last fifteen minutes and it’s cool enough in the shade. “Maybe you need desensitization therapy or something, I dunno. But anyway, I gotta go take a shower and drink a gallon of water to make up for what I sweated out on the ride home.”</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says, handing his empty glass to Steve with a small, sideways smile. “I’m gonna get a little more work done here and then I’ll be right in.”</p><p>Steve goes inside, resolving to forget the whole incident, even though he spends the rest of the day in a bit of a daze, half-formed thoughts about the arm and the scars and the kicked dog and Bucky swirling around in his head. Every once in a while, while they make stir-fry for dinner, he snatches a glance at it, though he’s pretty sure Bucky never catches him. He doesn’t want to make it weird, he doesn’t want to call attention to the arm. And he wasn’t lying; he mostly forgets that it exists, forgets that it’s anything other than the left arm that Bucky came out of his mother with. But now that he’s looked at it up close, he wants to keep looking, wants to watch the way the plates slip smoothly over each other as Bucky slices napa cabbage and tosses the vegetables in the burnished steel wok. He tells himself that it’s not weird because he has a <em>scientific</em> interest. But deep down inside, he knows there’s something fascinating about it on another level, a level that hides behind the big red button with the big white question mark that he still hasn’t worked up the courage to press.</p><p>The next day, Steve comes home at the usual time and sticks his head out the door to say hello, after which he goes upstairs to shower and changes into a pair of shorts and the NASA t-shirt. He’s standing in the kitchen an hour later flipping through a cookbook from the library when Bucky walks in through the back door. He’s shirtless again, his skin tinged pink and covered in a sheen of sweat from working in the full afternoon sun. Steve pours him a glass of cold tea and then, as Bucky is drinking it, something deep in Steve’s brain short-circuits with a nearly-audible fizzle. He leans into Bucky’s space and takes a deep sniff.</p><p>Bucky recoils like Steve had goosed him, spilling a little tea down his front, and says, “What the fuck? Are you going feral on me?”</p><p>Steve tries to laugh, but it squeaks out of his throat as a high-pitched giggle. He’s phenomenally embarrassed by his inability to control his weird impulses, but the choices are either to die of mortification or double down, so he decides to do what he always does and says, “Can I, uh,” motioning between his hot red face and Bucky’s metal arm.</p><p>Bucky narrows his eyes but says, “Okay… sure.” Steve leans forward again and sticks his nose right up against Bucky’s metal shoulder and takes another sniff. This time Bucky edges away from him nervously and says, “Steve, you’re freaking me out a little.”</p><p>“Your arm has a smell, did you know that?”</p><p>“I… no?” Bucky looks like Steve has just asked him if he knows that pigs have wings and are forming a Blue Angels squadron at this very minute. “I mean,” he says, after a little reluctant consideration, “you never really can smell yourself, right? I’ve never noticed it.” He lifts his metal hand up to his nose and takes an experimental sniff.</p><p>Steve takes a step toward him and Bucky shuffles backward, closer to the doorway. “I’m kinda afraid to ask, but what does it smell like?”</p><p>“Lemme see it again,” Steve says, making a grabby motion with his hand. Bucky tentatively holds out his arm and Steve lightly circles his metal wrist with his own hand, leaning over to take another sniff, smacking his lips softly like a deranged sommelier. “Like metal, obviously. Clean, warm metal. I’ve never noticed it before, so maybe it’s because I was just thinking about the arm?” Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline, though Steve hardly notices. “Or… or,” Steve hurries on, “because you were out in the sun without a shirt on and it got hot? It smells like, like a gun, right after you strip it and clean it.”</p><p>Bucky stares blankly at Steve for a moment. “Huh.”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s not a bad smell. It’s…” Steve snaps his fingers, looking for the right words. “It’s metallic. Sharp, but bright. Like a warm gun.”</p><p>Bucky grins, then, and starts singing softly, under his breath, “<em>Happiness is a warm gun</em>…”</p><p>Steve’s confusion must show on his face because Bucky swats the back of his head with his human hand and says, “That’s the Beatles, you philistine.”</p><p>Steve drops Bucky’s wrist and shoves his shoulder, his awkward mortification overbalancing into childish playfulness in his relief at the change of subject. “Go take a shower, Buck, because your metal arm might smell good but the rest of you is absolutely foul.”</p><p>A whole range of emotions of emotions cross Bucky’s face, from confusion to disbelief to derision, before he finally shakes his head and gives Steve the finger. “Sniff this, Stevie,” he says, and then runs out of the kitchen cackling before Steve can kick him.</p>
<hr/><p>One morning toward the middle of the month, Steve stumbles downstairs at half past seven and is greeted in the kitchen doorway by Bucky, bouncing on the balls of his feet and vibrating with glee like a golden retriever waiting for a stick to be thrown.</p><p>“Steve, Stevie, Steven, do you know what day it is?” He shoves a mug of coffee into Steve’s hands.</p><p>Steve blinks and sways backwards on his heels. Bucky reaches out and grabs him by the elbows, steadying him, and taps him lightly on the hand holding the coffee mug. “Steve, drink your coffee.” Then he lets go and claps his hands twice, imperiously. “We’ve got work to do.”</p><p>Steve drinks half of his coffee in one gulp. It seems like he’s going to need it. “Oh? We do?”</p><p>“Yes Steve. It’s Transplanting Day.” —</p><p>Steve can hear the capital letters like they were written in the air in 500-point sans-serif. He drinks the rest of his coffee and, steadier on his feet, goes over to the coffee maker to pour another cup. “Enlighten me.”</p><p>Bucky huffs through his nose in annoyance. “Steve, it’s the day we move all of my precious babies”—he waves a hand toward the dining room, at the seed trays and pots that cover the top of the sideboard and two-thirds of the dining table—“into the garden so that we can enjoy the luxuries of an empty nest again.”</p><p>Steve stares into the distance and nods slowly. He is aware of Bucky’s seedlings because they have slowly been taking over the rooms with east-facing windows since February, but he hadn’t thought to ask how long they were planning to stay. “It’ll be nice to get my studio back,” he says. “I feel weird painting when they’re all watching me. But…”—he wrinkles his nose—“I have to go to the Tower for training.”</p><p>Bucky waves his hand dismissively. “Call in sick. It’s not like one day is gonna ruin your physique.”</p><p>Steve grins into his coffee. “Okay, but maybe I’ll just tell them that something important came up. If I call in sick, they’re gonna get suspicious, on account of how I can’t get sick.”</p><p>Two hours later, they’re in the garden, surrounded by seedlings and wrist-deep in dirt, when the doorbell rings. Steve looks at Bucky, his brows furrowed. “Are you expecting somebody?”</p><p>“Who, me? No.”</p><p>They both get up and walk into the kitchen, each taking one side of the doorway to the hall. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees Bucky reach up and pull his long, serrated hunting knife off the top of the refrigerator. Steve peers around the door frame and sees a flash of red hair through the glass panel in the front door. “It’s just Nat,” he says with relief, and Bucky, somewhat sheepishly, turns around to hide the knife again.</p><p>When Steve opens the front door, it turns out that it’s not just Natasha, but also Clint and Bruce, too.</p><p>They all crowd into the entryway and Natasha gives Steve a slow up-and-down look that makes him flush hot immediately. Then she looks over his shoulder and sees Bucky, and her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Something more important, Steve? Something that’s making you sweat through your t-shirt and blush like a bride? Hmm?”</p><p>Steve can feel himself turn even redder and he hears Bucky stifle a laugh behind him. He opens his mouth to say something, but Natasha barrels on, motioning to his crotch with one hand. “And what are those? Did you answer the door in your underwear?”</p><p>“They’re running shorts!” Steve squeaks indignantly. “We were in the garden planting things, and it’s a warm day, and it’s not against the law to wear running shorts in the privacy of my own home. <em>Natasha.</em>” He shoots her his best glare.</p><p>“Well, then. You guys get back to planting things,”—the air quotes are audible around <em>planting things</em>—“and we’ll watch some Netflix and drink all your beer. And then when you’re done, we can go get something to eat.”</p><p>Steve looks over his shoulder and Bucky shrugs. “Okay, sure, come on in, make yourselves at home.” Clint immediately slips around him and throws himself headlong onto the couch. “And if you get tired of Netflix and beer, you can come help in the garden.”</p><p>Natasha snorts and looks pointedly at her manicure. “Yeah, I’ll think about it.”</p><p>She walks into the living room and snatches the computer off of Clint’s lap. Bruce, on the other hand, follows them through the kitchen and into the backyard, where he starts asking Bucky about his plants. Soon, they’re deep in a debate about whether you can make gazpacho with any old tomato or if you have to use <em>tomates de pera</em>, and the merits of <em>c. moschata </em>versus<em> c. maxima</em>. Steve listens for a moment, bemused, before he shrugs and goes back to planting out basil seedlings around the edges of the tomato beds.</p><p>Fifteen minutes later, Clint comes wandering out of the door and leans on the railing over the deck. “Nat kicked me out ‘cause I didn’t want to watch <em>Mean Girls</em> for the twentieth time.”</p><p>“Well,” Steve says, “you can help, but I’m not sure I trust you with seedlings.”</p><p>“Good call,” Bruce chimes in from where he’s sorting a pile of plastic plant labels.</p><p>Bucky wipes the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead. “Hmm, you wanna turn the compost? It’s easy and fun.”</p><p>Steve snorts. “Yeah, fun.” But Clint says, “Sure, why not?” and Bucky leads him around the beds to the back of the garden and shows him how to turn the compost with a pitchfork.</p><p>A little while later Steve is putting in the posts for the tomato trellis system when he hears a low wolf whistle behind him. He turns around and Natasha is standing on the deck with her phone out. “Make a muscle, boys.”</p><p>Bruce points at her and narrows his eyes. “Nat, if you put that in the group chat, I’m gonna hulk out.”</p><p>“Oops, too late,” she smirks. Bruce, Clint, and Steve all groan as one. “Tony’s gonna have a field day,” Steve says.</p><p>Clint waves his pitchfork threateningly at Natasha. “Naaaaat,” he groans, “he’s gonna have an Avengers charity wet t-shirt contest set up before the day’s over, or, or, like a Hire-an-Avenger-For-Yard-Work auction thing.”</p><p>They all laugh except for Bucky, who says, “You have an Avengers group chat?”</p><p>Steve yells, “NO!” at the same time that the other three say, “Yes!”</p><p>“It’s Avengers and Avengers-adjacent, actually. Pepper’s in it, and Maria Hill, though she doesn’t really participate,” Natasha says. Steve can see a wicked gleam in her eye. “You’re Avengers-adjacent, at least as much as Pepper. You want in?”</p><p>Bucky looks thoughtful, glancing at Steve who is making throat-cutting motions with his hand, and then at Clint, who is giving him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Okay, sure.”</p><p>Steve groans, hiding his hands in his face while Bruce laughs, and Clint pumps his fist and shouts, “Victory!”</p>
<hr/><p>[AVENGERS AND OTHER ASSORTED ASSHOLES]<br/>
[Nat]: I added Bucky to the group btw<br/>
[Tony]: BUCKY BARNES!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br/>
[Tony]: We’ve never met. Except for that one time at the Tower. I’m Tony Stark aka Iron Man, you may have heard of me<br/>
[Tony]: Nice pic, Nat<br/>
[Tony]: What do you think about an Avengers bachelor auction, Pep? For charity, of course<br/>
[Pepper]: Hello Bucky, please don’t pay attention to Tony. You can leave the group if he gets overwhelming. Which he often does.<br/>
[Tony]: Do you guys always do sweaty gardening in tiny shorts?? Can we use that pic to promote the bachelor auction???? Somebody get a good one of Thor and we’re all set<br/>
[Steve]: Oh my GOD TONY STOP<br/>
[Clint]: Lmao<br/>
[Maria]: Hi!<br/>
[Bucky]: Is Thor not part of the group?<br/>
[Nat]: Sure, but nobody’s invented a way to get him cell service off-world yet *cough* TONY *cough*<br/>
[Tony]: Yadda yadda I’m a busy man, Bucky you should know this is the semi-official Avengers group chat but mostly we use it to give Steve a hard time<br/>
[Bucky]: I guess I’m gonna fit right in then<br/>
[Steve]: Bucky, you’re supposed to be on my side!!<br/>
[Tony]: Which side is that? The top side or the bottom side?<br/>
[Steve]: Fuck you guys, I’m the leader of the Avengers! This is insubordination!<br/>
[Nat]: All I saw there was the word ‘sub’<br/>
[Steve]: AKSJDAKSJDHASKJDHASDAS<br/>
[Steve left the group AVENGERS AND OTHER ASSORTED ASSHOLES]<br/>
[Bucky]: This is even better than I thought it was gonna be<br/>
[Bucky]: You should see his face right now<br/>
[Pepper]: This happens at least once a month! Poor Steve.<br/>
[Bucky]: Nah he deserves it<br/>
[Bucky]: He’s a little shit<br/>
[Clint]: Lmfao<br/>
[Sam]: What’d I miss, guys? There’s like a hundred new messages and I’m not scrolling up through all that<br/>
[Sam]: Somebody fill me in<br/>
[Bruce]: Nat added Bucky to the group chat and Steve got riled up and left. Pepper feels sorry for him but Bucky says he deserves it because he’s a little shit.<br/>
[Sam]: So ya’ll know he lived with me for a while in DC, right?<br/>
[Sam]: And I gotta say, the man’s right<br/>
[Clint]: LMFAOOOOOOOO<br/>
[Nat]: Bucky, just tell us when he’s calmed down and I’ll add him back<br/>
[Bucky]: Okay</p>
<hr/><p>“I like your friends, Steve.”</p><p>Steve is lying on the couch with a pillow over his face. He says nothing. Bucky is slouched on the chaise longue like always, and Steve has got his knees bent against the back of the couch, his bare toes brushing the outside of Bucky’s thigh.</p><p>After a minute with no answer, Bucky turns sideways in his seat and pokes Steve in the side with his foot. “They’re really funny, Steve.”</p><p>Steve resolutely ignores him, trying to will the blush away from his face, trying to smooth away his consternation so that he can claw some of his dignity back from the slavering jaws of the Avengers group chat. Then Bucky wiggles his toes under the hem of Steve’s shirt and digs them in. “Maybe I like them better than you.”</p><p><em>Now, that’s going too far</em>, Steve thinks.Without moving the pillow, he brings one of his hands down like a striking cobra to grab Bucky’s ankle. “You’re about five seconds away from being tickled. Playing with fire, Buck.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t dare.” Bucky flexes his foot, but Steve’s got him in a death grip.</p><p>Finally, he moves the pillow enough so that Bucky can see his face underneath it. He narrows his eyes to glittering slits and smiles wickedly, though he knows he must still look irked beyond belief. “Try me. Tell me again how you like them better than me.”</p><p>Bucky grin is as cheeky as Steve’s is wicked. “I said, I like them…” but he doesn’t get any farther before Steve’s fingers are digging into the arch of his foot. Bucky shrieks like a child and kicks out with his other foot, catching Steve on the thigh, then grabs Steve’s own foot with his metal hand and digs his fingers in. Eventually, they both fall off the couch and onto the floor, narrowly missing the coffee table, covered in bruises and weak with laughter. Bucky says, “You ready for Nat to add you back into the group?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, still catching his breath. “It’s not the first time I’ve stormed out and slammed the virtual door behind me. Probably not the tenth time, either.”</p><p>Bucky is still holding Steve’s foot in his metal hand, their legs tangled up between them. “Are you really mad? Or do you just do it because you know they expect it?” He rubs his thumb over the bottom of Steve’s foot absently, as if he’s forgotten that he’s holding Steve’s foot at all. Steve doesn’t know if he’s actually forgotten or if he’s just pretending, so he grinds his teeth to avoid giving Bucky the satisfaction of jerking his foot away.</p><p>“The last one,” he says, and it’s only a little bit of a lie. “And because it’s fun. And sometimes I think they need to let off some steam without me around.”</p><p>Bucky moves his thumb around in a circle, and Steve almost screams. “You’re a good leader, you know. It takes a good leader to give their team space like that.”</p><p>Steve knows that Bucky thinks he’s a good leader. Hell, it’s why he and the other Howling Commandos followed him on all those death-defying missions deep behind enemy lines. But he also knows that Bucky doesn’t remember most of that, so it feels like a brand new sentiment, discovered all over again.</p><p>He’s touched. “Thanks, Buck.” And also a little embarrassed, which he covers up by saying, “Give me a massage while you’re down there, why dontcha,” and Bucky looks down at his hand on Steve’s foot, confused; clearly, he’d actually forgotten that he was holding it. He shoves it to the side and pushes himself up with one hand on the coffee table, looking a little embarrassed, himself. “Fuck off. My stomach’s telling me it’s time for dinner,” he says, and disappears behind the couch while Steve looks up at the distant ceiling and very carefully thinks about nothing.</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later, they’re sitting on the sofa watching <em>Star Trek</em> reruns on the laptop after dinner. Steve is sitting on one end of the couch with his sketchbook out, and there’s a bunch of flowers in their water pitcher sitting on the table: daisies, lilies, a dark, grapey iris and a shining sunflower with a deep black center, a random assortment from the florist’s for the portrait he wants to do of Bucky as <em>Ophelia</em>, but lying asleep on a bed of flowers rather than drowned in a river. Bucky is sitting on the chaise longue in his usual position, slouched back on his shoulders with his chin tucked into his chest and his feet hanging off the end of the cushion.</p><p>Out of the blue, he says, “Hey Steve?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Remember the other day, when you were looking at my arm?”</p><p>“Yeah?” Steve leans forward and rotates the pitcher a little to give himself a better view of the iris.</p><p>“And you said something about desensitization therapy?”</p><p>“Uh huh?” He pulls the center petal of the iris down a little further to expose its furry, egg-yolk tongue.</p><p>“Well, I talked to Dr. Zaidi about it. And she said, um. She thinks it’s a good idea. It might work.”</p><p>“Oh. That’s good. So…”</p><p>“So can you come over here and pet my arm?”</p><p>Steve bursts out laughing, but Bucky just frowns at him.</p><p>“What, you mean now? Like, really pet it?”</p><p>“Like you’d pet a cat, that’s exactly what she said. Maybe just a little at first and then for longer each time.”</p><p>“Hmm. Okay.” Steve closes his sketchbook around his pencil and scoots down the couch until he’s right next to Bucky. Bucky sits up and pulls off his sweater, his hair crackling with static electricity, and tosses it onto the coffee table. Then he slouches back again, his metal arm laying in the crack in the cushions between them, palm up, fingers loosely curled.</p><p>Just like…” Steve starts, not really sure what to do. He’s pet cats before, he has. <em>Just imagine it’s fluffy</em>, he tells himself. He lays his hand on the metal forearm and lets it sit there for just a moment. It’s warm from having been wrapped up in the sweater, and he can hear the minute, comforting, drumhead <em>hssh</em> when Bucky twitches his fingers. It doesn’t feel like something inert made out of metal, it feels like something quick and alive, a soft animal in a hard shell.</p><p>He glances up at Bucky’s profile; he’s got his eyes squeezed shut, but he doesn’t look pained, or uncomfortable. Just a little overwhelmed, maybe. His heartbeat, when Steve concentrates on the quiet pulse of it, sounds quicker than normal, but not in the realm of distress, not even jittery. “Okay?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.” His voice is steady, with only a hint of strain. “You can start petting now.”</p><p>Steve snorts and strokes his hand from the crook of the metal elbow all the way down to Bucky’s wrist. The metal hand spasms into a fist and the servos go <em>zzzing</em> all at once, but Bucky is breathing steadily through his nose and his jaw is relaxed, so Steve does it again. And then again and again. The metal warms under his skin until it’s almost body-hot, and Bucky’s hand uncurls little by little until it’s lying open and relaxed on the cushions again.</p><p>When Steve glances back up at Bucky’s face, he’s staring at the laptop, but his eyes are a little glazed. “Okay?” Steve asks again, and Bucky shakes himself a little, and then meets his eye with a smile. “Yeah. It’s… it was weird at first. But I guess I got used to it pretty quick. Maybe Dr. Zaidi was right.”</p><p>“Dr. Zaidi is always right,” Steve says with a grin. “Do you want me to keep going?” He stills his hand on Bucky’s wrist and feels the way the plates shift underneath his hand when Bucky flexes his fingers.</p><p>“Maybe…” Bucky says, and then trails off. He’s still looking Steve straight in the eye, but his expression is dreamy, his gaze unfocused. “Do the palm?”</p><p>“Sure.” Bucky flattens his hand out on the couch cushion and Steve uses the tips of his fingers to rub circles into the middle of his hand, like he’s blending charcoals on a smooth piece of paper. He stares at whatever scene is playing out on the laptop, not taking anything in, not thinking about anything, just focused on the silent slip of his fingertips over the soft-slick surface of Bucky’s metal palm, each barely-imperceptible bump between the plates like the soft <em>clickity-clack</em> of a train car coasting through the night.</p><p>Eventually he feels his eyes start to slip closed, and he rouses a little, looking over at Bucky, who is, unsurprisingly, asleep. His head is lolling a little to the side, the tendon in his neck standing out under the soft, vulnerable skin. His heart-of-oak chest is rising and falling under the thin cotton of his heather-grey t-shirt, and his lips are parted slightly, the soft hush of his breathing audible now that the neglected laptop has gone to sleep and the dim house is bathed in a dreamy silence.</p><p>Something wells up in Steve’s chest, a big, hot wave, rising and rising until it’s roaring silently in his ears, but then he makes the mistake of stopping the movement of his fingers, and Bucky wakes up immediately. He starts and shakes his head like a rousing lion and then pulls his hand away, sitting up on the chaise longue with his back to Steve. He stretches, joints cracking, arms stuck straight out above his head, and Steve feels compelled to look quickly away when the hem of his t-shirt rides up over the soft dip and swell of his lower back.</p><p>Bucky looks at his metal arm, turning it this way and that as if he were seeing it for the first time. “I think it worked,” he says, turning to grin at Steve over his shoulder.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, swallowing around the thing in his throat that’s trying to choke him to death. “Did, uh, did Dr. Zaidi say how long we have to keep it up?”</p><p>Bucky shrugs, swinging his legs off the side of the chaise longue and walking around the back of the couch toward the kitchen. “I dunno. Every few days, as long as we need to, until it doesn’t feel weird anymore. You want a cup of tea before bed?” he calls from the kitchen.</p><p>“Sure,” Steve says, but it comes out as a croak. He clears his throat. “Sure.” He looks down at his own hand and runs his thumb over the sensitive tips of his bunched-together fingers. <em>Clickity-clack </em>goes the ghost of the night train, the sleepy sleeper car in his head. <em>Clickity-clack, clickity-clack.</em></p>
<hr/><p>Bucky spends so much time out in the garden, now, that Steve hardly sees him in the afternoons if he doesn’t go out after he gets back from Manhattan and let Bucky put him to work. As the beds are all filled with new soil, there’s hardly any weeding to do, but Bucky gives him a pair of gardening shears and tells him to go around the edges of the beds and clip the tall grass that’s springing up. They have a little argument about whether or not Steve could do the same thing on his feet, pushing the lawnmower, instead of on his knees with a pair of glorified scissors, but it’s just a mock-argument, like most of their arguments are.</p><p>“We used to fight a lot, you know,” he says, after the grass is clipped and they’ve moved on to planting carrots. He had, under Bucky’s careful eye, gone around the perimeter of the bed with the pole beans, trailing his finger in the dirt to make a little ditch for the carrot seeds. Bucky had followed behind him, sprinkling the microscopic seeds in the ditch, on his knees and hunched over until his nose almost touched the dirt, and then Steve had gone back around behind him carefully filling the ditch back in again and tamping it down softly with the pads of his fingers like it was a baby’s fontanelle.</p><p>“Oh, yeah?” Bucky says. “I mean, I know about some fights, like that one time I held you down and made you eat cabbage. But not many. And we don’t fight now.”</p><p>Steve laughs; it’s his own fault that Bucky remembers the cabbage thing because he was the one who told him. “Yeah, I know. But we were different people back then.”</p><p>Bucky sits back on his haunches and looks at Steve between the bamboo stakes that make up the pole bean trellises; he’s biting his lip and his brows are furrowed, an intimation of soft hurt in the set of his jaw. “You know I didn’t mean it like that,” Steve says. “You know I don’t miss the person you were before the war.”</p><p>Bucky narrows his eyes across the garden bed. “Don’t lie to me.” It’s not an accusation, it’s a request, plaintive, almost begging.</p><p>Steve looks down at his hands, dirt under his fingernails and in the lines of his palms. They look like the hands of someone who does real work, not someone whose job is a combination of bare-knuckle boxing and stultifying bureaucracy. “You’re right,” he says after a minute. “I do miss the you from before the war. You were so funny, so… so lively, always had a plan or a trick up your sleeve, or something entertaining, always with a new bar to check out, or a new girl on your arm, or a new song to dance to. But it was exhausting, sometimes. You were like a match, you know, when you strike it and it flares up all bright and burning.”</p><p>He looks back up at Bucky again, aware that maybe he’s said too much. But Bucky is looking at him with wide eyes and something akin to hunger in his face. He’s chewing on his bottom lip, now, worrying it between the pearls of his teeth so that it flushes red. Steve swallows and looks back down at his hands, plucks an overlooked, overlong blade of grass and rolls it between his fingertips.</p><p>“I mean, I miss myself, too, you know. I was the same way, livelier, funnier, quicker to run and jump and laugh. And quicker to fight. I had a chip on my shoulder and I took it out on you, most often. And you were awful good to me, always put up with it until I went too far, and then you gave me what-for. Never made excuses about how my bad attitude was understandable because I was in poor health. You punched me if I needed punching.”</p><p>“Jesus,” he hears Bucky whisper.</p><p>“You see what I mean?” Steve says, smiling, dropping the crushed blade of grass on the ground and standing up, dusting his hands on his thighs. “We were both of us something different, back then, idiots full of life, always getting into scrapes.” He walks around the bed and holds out his hand to pull Bucky up to his feet. “And now we’re old and hopefully a little less stupid and we don’t get into scrapes anymore.”</p><p>“<em>I</em> don’t get into scrapes anymore,” Bucky snarks, picking up his pack of carrot seeds and the yellow trowel. They walk back toward the house.</p><p>Steve rolls his eyes. “Okay, fine, but we’re not talking about my job. I’m talking about how we’ve both changed, and now we’re different, and I like us this way. I’m glad we don’t fight like we used to. Maybe I used to relish it, but I’d hate to fight with you now, actually. I’d feel terrible about it.”</p><p>“Why?” Bucky asks, as they go up the stairs to the deck and through the kitchen door. He drops the trowel and the packet of seeds beside the sink and turns on the tap to wash his hands. “Because you feel sorry for me now?” He sounds defensive, his back to Steve and his shoulders tight.</p><p>Steve tsks disdainfully. “I don’t feel sorry for you now. Come on, Buck. I feel sorry for the past you. But you now? You’re living the high life, asshole.”</p><p>Bucky dries his hands off on the towel on the oven door. “That’s right,” he says wonderingly, as if it’s just dawning on him that Steve is his meal ticket. “I’m a kept woman.”</p><p>“Bucky…” Steve starts, but Bucky cuts him off. “No, Steve, don’t deny it. Anyone with eyes in their head can see that this has all the hallmarks of a sugar daddy, sugar baby relationship.” He’s grinning like the Cheshire cat, wide and fiendish.</p><p>Steve tries to hide his discomfort in a scoff, but his mind is screeching around in circles going <em>wee ooo wee ooo</em> like a tiny fire truck. “Okay, really? Because I think there’s more to being a sugar baby than you think there is.”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t know, Steve, I’ve been on the internet a time or two. I know things,” Bucky says, and breezes past him and through the door to the hallway.</p><p>“I take back what I said about fighting,” Steve calls, but the only answer is Bucky’s delighted cackle from the top of the stairs.</p>
<hr/><p>Eventually, inevitably, Steve comes home one day from a mission with his leg in a brace. Bucky is not happy and he doesn’t even try to hide it; he fusses inefficiently over him all afternoon with the pissed-off, huffy manner he gets when Steve is hurt. He mothers Steve in his annoyingly clingy way, like two hundred pounds of staticky Styrofoam packing peanuts. Steve gets irritated and snappish, and Bucky eventually retreats to the garden to weed aggressively and sulk. Steve feels bad about it, but if there’s anything he hates worse than the pins-and-needles feeling of his bones knitting back together, it’s being helplessly dependent on someone else while it happens. <em>It’s just who I am</em>, he thinks, <em>I’ve always been like this</em>, but he recognizes that he’s trying to justify his own behavior to himself. He’s trying to make his resistance to being cared for make sense, like it’s the logical reaction and not something that stems from the most irrational part of him, an old wound that never heals. He adds it to the mile-long list of things to bring up in therapy and then lays on the couch for a few hours flicking fitfully through every half-decent thing on Netflix.</p><p>When the sun starts to set behind the houses across the street, Bucky comes back inside looking too rueful for Steve to muster up even an ounce of annoyance at him. They apologize to each other like proper adults, and then they both feel better. After he makes dinner, Bucky orders Steve to go upstairs while he cleans up the kitchen, and Steve, too tired to argue, hop-clunks into his bedroom and manages to get his t-shirt off before he flops down on the bed.</p><p>Ten minutes later, he’s lying on top of the covers on the point of dozing off when he hears Bucky come up the stairs and stand in his doorway. “I can’t debrief tonight, pal,” Steve says apologetically, peeking out from under the arm that’s slung across his face. “If I have to stand on this leg for five minutes, it’ll kill me.”</p><p>“Okay,” says Bucky, coming over and sitting down on the bed by Steve’s feet. The bed creaks comfortingly under his weight. “What about like this?”</p><p>They stare at each other for a long minute, and then Bucky stands up and says, “Nope, too much eye contact. I’m just gonna…” He jerks his thumb toward the doorway.</p><p>Steve heaves a sigh and says, “Just lie the fuck down. We shared a bed the whole time we were living together before the war, and we slept in the same tent when we went camping. I don’t see why this is any different.”</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says easily, “but I’m gonna change into my sleep clothes.”</p><p>He comes back in just the black boxer briefs that he and Steve use interchangeably and Steve’s threadbare US Army t-shirt, and they lie side by side, face up, but it’s not the same. They’re not actually touching, and that’s a big part of the debriefing, even if Bucky has never acknowledged it and Steve shies away from thinking about it like a horse from a rattlesnake. What are they supposed to do like this, hold hands?</p><p>Steve sighs again and rolls away, over on his side, his good leg curled up, hoping that Bucky will follow his lead. He can’t bring himself to ask Bucky to touch him, even though it’s what he wants, even though he knows that Bucky would understand, even if their continuing desensitization therapy sessions—during which Bucky inevitably falls asleep—make Steve himself feel soft and gooey inside like a cherry bonbon. Even if…</p><p>But Bucky must see what Steve wants, because he rolls over, too, sliding close behind him. He’s got his head pillowed on his human arm, and his metal hand is resting lightly on Steve’s bare shoulder. He starts talking about the progress of the garden and how he knows the tree in the back corner is definitely an apple now that it’s bloomed, and what <em>kind </em>of an apple tree is it gonna turn out to be, better not be Red Delicious or he’s gonna chop it down for firewood, who cares if they don’t have a fireplace, but Steve’s not listening. He can feel the radiant heat of Bucky’s body on the bare skin of his back and the way the short hairs on the nape of his neck stir each time Bucky exhales. His bony knees are tucked snug against the back of Steve’s thighs, and the vibrations of his voice rumble through the pillow like an undersea earthquake.</p><p>Steve feels hot all over, on the point of breaking out in a sweat, even though the room is cool and he’s not really wearing enough clothes. The unexpected proximity, the novel position, it’s all that his body wants him to think about. There’s a feeling in his abdomen like his insides are liquifying and all of a sudden, he is acutely, painfully aware that his body has taken the reins. He’s unbearably turned on, his cock no longer lying soft between his legs but half hard and getting harder every second. <em>Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit</em>, Steve thinks. <em>Oh fuck. Oh shit</em>.</p><p>He starts to panic. <em>What do I do, what do I do?</em> He’s afraid that if he starts talking, his voice is going to give something away. He can, under no circumstances, let Bucky find out what’s going on in his underwear right now. He’s not even sure what’s going on in his underwear right now; although the effect is startlingly obvious, the cause is not so clear. <em>Why now? After so long?</em> Immediately, the big red button with the big white question mark pops up in his mind.</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh fuck.</em>
</p><p>“Stevie, you okay?” Bucky asks, lifting his head off the pillow a little to look at Steve’s profile. He presses down a little harder on Steve’s shoulder to give himself leverage, and Steve has to close his eyes and swallow before he can rasp out, “Uh, uh yeah. Just, uh, remembered something.”</p><p>“Oh, Steve, about the mission?” Bucky says, his voice soft and concerned. “Do you want to talk about it?”</p><p>“Not… not right now. Keep talking about the tree,” Steve says, unable to suppress the shiver that runs through him when the soft huff of Bucky’s breath skates over the sensitive shell of his ear. But Bucky just lies back down and says, “Okay,” and Steve lets the sound of his voice slip again into the background of the thoughts that are whirling, jagged and frenetic and half-formed, around the inside of his head.</p><p>He can’t… this isn’t the time to think about it. He’s got a problem, and it’s obvious that the only real solution is to pretend to fall asleep. He hates to duck out of a debriefing like this, especially because he actually does feel the need to unburden himself about the mission, but he knows he can’t possibly think about that when there’s <em>this</em>, trapped under the waistband of his boxer briefs and pressing into his stomach, desperate for a little relief, aching for the touch of a cool, long-fingered hand... <em>Shut up, shut up, shut up, </em>he thinks at himself, savagely, viciously, digging his nails into the palm of the hand under his cheek until it stings.</p><p>So he closes his eyes and steadies his breathing, slowing it down by degrees so that it doesn’t look like he just fell off the cliff of sleep. More like a gentle incline. He relaxes his body, easing out of his muscles the tension that he’d been holding all day. He can feel the shoulder under Bucky’s hand start to droop, and his heartbeat grows correspondingly slower.</p><p>“Stevie?” Bucky whispers. When he gets no answer, he sighs minutely, gets off the bed, and turns off the reading lamp. Steve hears him cross the hall into his own room, but in less than a minute he comes back with the duvet from his own bed. <em>Oh no</em>, Steve thinks, <em>I should have gotten under the covers, I didn’t want him to have to sleep in the cold</em>, but it’s too late, now. Bucky spreads the duvet over top of Steve, tucking it gently around his leg brace, and Steve thinks that he’s finally off the hook, Bucky’s going to close the door and go back to his own room and then Steve can jerk off in peace, but to his consternation and surprise, Bucky walks back around the other side of the bed and slides under the duvet behind him.</p><p><em>Slow breaths,</em> Steve thinks frantically. <em>I’m asleep, I’m asleep</em>.</p><p>Bucky scoots across until he’s back in the same position as before, close behind Steve with his metal hand on Steve’s shoulder, his thumb stroking lightly across Steve’s skin. Then slowly, carefully, he slides his head forward on the pillow until his forehead is resting lightly on the back of Steve’s neck, right at the first knob of his spine. Steve can feel the sweep of his silky hair and the rhythmic huff of air as he breathes in and out of his nose. He can even, <em>oh god</em>, feel the brush of Bucky’s long eyelashes on his skin as he blinks.</p><p>Steve there lies in agony, an equal mixture of terror, arousal, and confusion coiling in his gut. But as the stroke of Bucky’s thumb sets up a rhythm with his breathing and the brush of his eyelashes—<em>stroke huff brush, stroke huff brush</em>—he finds his mind relaxing, whiting out, and he falls, mercifully, asleep.</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning when Steve wakes up, the light is all wrong. The curtains are closed, but the morning sun, reflected off the building across the street, slips through the cracks and illuminates the room with a soft, warm glow. He normally wakes up right before the sun rises; how could he have slept through his alarm? He rolls over and fumbles around on the bedside table, but his phone isn’t there.</p><p>All of a sudden, like a water balloon bursting in his face, he remembers last night. Bucky’s thumb stroking his shoulder. The way his body reacted. Pretending to be asleep, which must have led to actually falling asleep. He whips his head around and looks at the other side of the bed. There’s an indention in the duvet in the shape of a body, but when he runs a hand over it, it’s cold. <em>Okay, so he didn’t stay here last night. Or he left a while ago</em>, Steve thinks.</p><p>He drops his head back down on the pillow with a huff. What the fuck is he supposed to do now? Bucky is… Bucky. He hasn’t changed. Or he has, like Steve had told him that day in the garden, but really, he’s the same in all the ways that count. He’s kind and generous and thoughtful. He still takes care of Steve in his subtle way and without keeping score, never expecting anything in return. He’s open-handed with his smiles, his affection, the unplumbable well of goodwill that exists at the very core of his being. He has slipped once more into the very center of Steve’s life and enmeshed himself there without Steve even really being aware of it, filling in all of the cracks and gaps and dusty corners that Steve had stopped even noticing were there.</p><p><em>But he’s my best friend</em>, Steve thinks, whining at himself, as if he possibly has any control over his feelings. He’s never been able to control his feelings, not the good ones or the bad ones or the in-between ones. He’s the pilot at the helm of the boat of his body, but he has no rudder at all, and has spent the last thirty (or ninety-six) years yawing all over at the mercy of the wind and the waves. If, all of a sudden, some intractable part of him suddenly decides to find his best friend gorgeous, well, there’s fuck-all he can do about it.</p><p><em>And god, is Bucky gorgeous</em>, he thinks, biting his lip and squeezing his eyes shut against the whimper of his soul. It feels like admitting something momentous to himself; Bucky isn’t just attractive, he’s attractive to <em>Steve</em>. He has the same face, but it’s not the same at all. His eyes are sharper, jaw and cheekbones more pronounced, his stubble thicker. <em>His hair, oh god</em>, Steve thinks, and swallows heavily. His fingers itch to run through that hair, dark and shiny, to twist it around a finger, to grab it, clench it in two fists, and pull. To bring a handful up to his nose and just smell it. He had always been handsome, but the rounded, youthful quality that had made him look like a mere boy on the battlefield is gone. <em>And now</em>… But through an enormous effort of will, he cuts that line of thought off dead. He’s already half hard again, he already feels guilty and shameful lying in bed and thinking about Bucky like this, although there’s also a thrill in admitting it to himself, finally whispering out loud the dirty secret.</p><p>Of course, something in Steve has changed, too. And all of a sudden, lying in the warm, late May morning light under a duvet that smells like Bucky’s shampoo, the pieces start to fall into place.</p><p>
  <em>I’m never not thinking about him. He’s always at the forefront of my mind. Any time I go away from him, a part of me is reaching out, looking back. I want to touch him every time I look at him. I never want to stop touching him or looking at him. I have to force myself to stop looking at him. My sketchbook is full of him. I haven’t drawn anything but him in months.</em>
</p><p>“Holy shit,” he whispers. He feels cold panic and a hysterical laughing joy rise up in his chest. He feels like he’s having an asthma attack. His heart is beating a firing-squad tattoo and his knee-jerk, panicked reaction is to call for Bucky. He wants to be comforted. He wants Bucky to put his hand on his chest and make him breathe slower. He wants Bucky to hold his face in his hands and tell him it’s going to be alright. He wants Bucky to lean in and kiss him. He wants… he <em>wants</em>. </p><p>It’s not just that he thinks Bucky is gorgeous—and here the realization hits him like a speeding car, sending him careening across five lanes of traffic and over a guardrail—it’s that he’s in love.</p>
<hr/><p>Steve takes a cold shower. His leg is almost healed, he can feel it, but he puts the brace back on anyway because he knows Bucky will frown at him if he doesn’t.</p><p>He slowly makes his way downstairs and hobbles through the door to the kitchen, where Bucky is making French toast. He turns around when Steve comes in, a piece of bread dripping eggs and milk in his hand, and smiles. “Mornin’ sunshine, how’s the leg?”</p><p>Steve can’t look him in the eye. He clears his throat and says, “Okay, I guess. I’m gonna take the brace off later.” He shuffles over to the coffee maker, but Bucky waves his elbow in the direction of a mug sitting on the edge of the sink and says, “I poured yours when I heard you get out of the shower.” Then he narrows his eyes at Steve. “You sure you’re okay?”</p><p>Steve, for the millionth time, curses his inability to dissimulate. He takes a sip of his coffee to give his face a second to recover some semblance of normality. “Yeah, my leg just aches a little.” He takes a bigger gulp and the hot, nutty, bitter coffee washes down his throat, comforting and bolstering. “What time is it anyway? I didn’t hear my alarm.”</p><p>“It’s nine o’clock,” says Bucky, a guilty look on his face before he turns back to the griddle and flips over the French toast. “I thought you might need some extra sleep so I pilfered your phone this morning. It’s on the table.” He points into the dining room. “Go sit down and I’ll bring you a plate in a second.” Steve walks stiff-legged into the dining room and, without even thinking about it, sits down in Bucky’s chair at the head of the table, where he can see through the doorway and into the kitchen.</p><p>
  <em>I have to force myself to stop looking at him. My sketchbook is full of him. I haven’t drawn anything but him in a month.</em>
</p><p>Immediately, he realizes what he’s done, but it’s too late to change places. Bucky’s already coming through the doorway with a plate of French toast and the bottle of maple syrup. He cocks an eyebrow at Steve and says, annoyed, “Are you the damn paterfamilias now? Why are you in my seat?”</p><p>Steve laughs out loud. God, Bucky has such a way of putting him at ease. It’s one of the things he loves about him. He loves him. <em>I love you</em>, he thinks, involuntarily, as inevitable as his next heartbeat. He can feel his face catch fire, but Bucky is already gone, back in the kitchen, slicing more brioche for the next batch of French toast. He’s still wearing just the Army t-shirt and his black boxer briefs, and his legs look like they’re five miles long. Now, he’s leaning on one hand on the counter, his bare right foot hooked around his left ankle, humming softly while the butter spits and crackles on the griddle. Steve feels like he’s about to melt, slide off of his chair, and bloop into a puddle on the floor. <em>Get it together, shit-for-brains,</em> he berates himself. <em>If you can keep a cool head under fire, you can do this. Nothing has changed. He’s still your best friend.</em></p><p>Bucky stacks the last of the French toast on a plate, turns the stove off, and comes into the dining room. He stands next to the table for a second before turning a long-suffering glare on Steve and sitting down heavily in the chair on Steve’s right. Steve snickers around a mouthful of French toast. “What, did you think we had assigned seating?”</p><p>Bucky heaves a heavy sigh. “Steven, don’t you remember what Dr. Zaidi told you? About routine? How I need to have familiar things and habits that anchor me in the present?” He tucks his chin, looking at Steve through his eyelashes, his mouth drawn close in a pout. It’s a look that sends a zing down Steve’s spine, but it’s also so irritatingly fraternal that he can easily ignore the throb in his groin. He reaches around the corner of the table and pinches Bucky’s side, right where he’s ticklish. Bucky yelps and dodges out of reach.</p><p>“Okay, asshole, just for that I’m taking the syrup away.” He hooks a finger through the handle on the bottle and slides it down toward the other end of the table.</p><p>“That’s fine,” Steve says, “I don’t need it anyway, I’m all done.” There’s one piece of French toast still on his plate, but he folds it into quarters with his fingers and stuffs the whole thing in his mouth. He grins at the look of disgust that Bucky gives him, gets out of his chair, and hobbles the three steps to the living room before throwing himself full-length on the couch, propping his braced leg up on the back.</p><p>“I know I should be cleaning up since you cooked, but since I’m convalescent, I’m just gonna lie here and let you do all the work today,” he says around the half-chewed ball of eggy bread, waving his hand graciously in the air.</p><p>“Jerk.” He can hear the smile in it. A balled-up napkin comes flying over the back of the couch and hits him in the face.</p><p>He gives Bucky the finger. “Punk.”  And then, before he can think twice, “You love it.”</p><p>Bucky’s voice comes from the kitchen, over the soft clatter of plates being set down in the sink. “I always have,” he says, and Steve’s heart turns over in his chest like a whale breaching with a thunderous, resounding crash, a tidal wave sweeping over him as he lies breathless beneath its drenching, crushing joy.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*Tour guide voice* Folks, if you look straight ahead you will see that we are entering the famous Pine Forest of Pining. Please be aware that it is not a very big forest, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in the sheer number of pines.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. June</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: brief mention of homophobic language typical of the 1930s</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve is in hell. It’s the first week of June and the weather is perfect, and he and Bucky go back to Uniqlo to buy a summer wardrobe. Bucky insists that they try everything on because anything they buy has to fit them both, more or less, so they sneak inside a dressing room together and Steve is tormented for twenty minutes by having to watch Bucky take his clothes off, over and over again. He tries to distract himself by looking at the incomprehensible washing symbols on the tags and pawing at the material of each item of clothing, until Bucky starts to rib him about how maybe he should learn to sew and then they won’t have to go back to 5th Avenue ever again.</p>
<p>Steve imagines himself on his knees, measuring Bucky’s inseam, and gets so lightheaded he just about faints.</p>
<p>Bucky interprets this as low blood sugar and is about to abandon their armful of clothes and drag Steve off to the nearest food truck, but Steve pulls himself together enough to get to the registers and pay for everything. He doesn’t even know what they’ve bought. He would have agreed to wear kaftans or hot pants all summer long just to get out of there.</p>
<p>But it’s even worse at home. Now that the weather’s turned hot, Bucky abandons whatever reticence about showing his body he might have previously had and does all his lounging in boxer briefs—and nothing else. He works in the garden in a pair of running shorts—and nothing else. Even when he’s presentable enough to leave the house, all of the shirts that constrict Steve’s shoulders and gap at his waist cling to Bucky like lichen to a stone, and the shorts, shorter than what Steve is used to (“No cargos, Steve, that’s where I put my foot down”) hit him right at mid-thigh, highlighting his graceful calves, his predator’s thighs, and his beautiful knees. Steve knows how ridiculous he is, thinking that knees can be beautiful. But he wants to get on his own knees and worship them; that’s how beautiful they are.</p>
<p>One day, Bucky falls asleep on the couch right after lunch. The curtains are drawn, but a sliver of sunlight sneaks in and lies in a bright stripe across his stomach. Steve had been sitting in the armchair at the foot of the couch, trying and failing to read, but as soon as he realizes that Bucky is well and truly asleep, he grabs his sketchbook. It’s a golden opportunity to observe and draw from life rather than memory, to stare shamelessly, to quench his thirst.</p>
<p>Bucky is lying on his back, one leg out straight and one crooked against the back of the couch, his arms flung over his head and his face turned toward Steve. The position of his arms lifts his ribcage, hollowing out his stomach and making the bones of his hips stand out in sharp relief. His heel is caught on a throw pillow, and it makes his long foot arch over the arm of the couch like a dancer en pointe. He looks like a sleeping knife.</p>
<p>Steve blocks out the pose and begins to work on the details of Bucky’s face, but after a while his pencil begins to move slower and slower, and eventually, he’s just looking. He’s so beautiful, and Steve has all of this newly-discovered love that even his big, still-new body is not big enough to contain. How he longs to reach out and skim his palm down the long muscles of Bucky’s thigh, trace the fine line of his ribs from sternum to spine, ghost his fingers across the delicate skin on the underside of his upper arm. Is it as soft as it looks? It’s the pale, peachy color of a piece of exquisite satin, and Steve is wild to know what it feels like. Instead, he slips his hand inside his own sleeve, touches his own arm in the same place, and imagines that it’s Bucky’s fine-grained skin he feels under his fingertips.</p>
<p>He gets lost in his thoughts.</p>
<p>The stripe of sunlight has moved up to Bucky’s chest, picking each dark hair out in gold and copper, when he suddenly rolls over, pulling his arms down and turning his face toward the back of the couch. He laughs, low and syrupy in his chest, and murmurs, “<em>Stevie</em>.”</p>
<p>Steve actually gasps, and then claps a hand over his mouth. Nothing happens for a long, long moment. Then Steve can’t stay still anymore; he gets up and runs into the kitchen, silently, on his toes, and then bites his knuckles while he paces around in a tight circle. He can’t stay here, not with that <em>Stevie</em> hanging in the air, uncleared, so he decides to go running.</p>
<p>He leaves a note on the coffee table under Bucky’s phone that says <em>Went running, back before dinner, can you cook? Or takeout ok. -S.</em> After a minute’s consideration he draws a caricature of himself running past a sign with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction reading “New York City 500 miles.”</p><hr/>
<p>Right before dinnertime he stumbles up the front steps, lets himself in the door, and collapses flat on his face on the hall carpet. The thump must reverberate through the foundation because Bucky comes running in from the garden, banging the screen door flat against the side of the house.</p>
<p>“Are you okay? What happened?” He kneels down and starts running his hands up Steve’s sweaty sides, trying to get his shirt off, checking for injuries, which is exactly what Steve doesn’t need. He flaps his hand feebly and says, “Stop, stop, m’fine, need water.”</p>
<p>Bucky brings him a glass of water from the kitchen, and after he drains the whole thing in one go, he says, “Sorry to scare you, I’m just pretty beat. Ran all the way to Connecticut and back.”</p>
<p>There’s a long pause where Bucky just stares at him, something of the Winter Soldier’s blank expression back on his face but with Bucky’s familiar <em>you idiot</em> look in his eyes. “What the fuck, Steve.”</p>
<p>Steve feels a little silly, okay? Who does something like run all the way to Connecticut to try to escape their feelings? But he just says, “I was going to Manhattan, ran over the bridge, and then I just kind of got in the zone and, I guess, I forgot what I was doing?” He grins sheepishly and hopes Bucky won’t press the issue.</p>
<p>It’s all true, at least. He did get caught in the zone. He started thinking about himself and Bucky and the past and the future and <em>what the fuck am I gonna do now</em>, and all of a sudden, he crossed a bridge and there was a sign saying, “Connecticut Welcomes You, Greenwich Next 4 Exits” and it turned out that he’d brought his feelings along with him. <em>Well, shit</em>.</p>
<p>“What’s for dinner?” he asks, hopeful and desperate.</p><hr/>
<p>Later that evening, they sit down on the couch to watch <em>A New Hope</em> for the umpteenth time. Steve slouches against the arm rest and stretches his legs out on the coffee table with a groan. Bucky sits up a little straighter and gestures toward Steve with his metal hand. “Gimmie.”</p>
<p>Steve is perplexed. “Gimmie what?”</p>
<p>“Gimmie your legs, idiot. You need a massage, otherwise you’re going to feel like shit tomorrow. You won’t even be able to walk. Just hobble hobble hobble all over the house and…”—here he puts on a high falsetto—“‘Oh Bucky, get me a glass of water’ and ‘Oh Bucky, hand me my hankie’ all the goddamn day.”</p>
<p>Steve is giggling and trying to stifle it. “A kick to the face is what I’m gonna give you.”</p>
<p>Bucky gives him his done-with-your-shit look, an old, familiar friend in and of itself. “Steven, give me your legs. Don’t make me come over there and get them.”</p>
<p>Steve almost says <em>Show me what you got</em>, but in a moment of sudden grace, he realizes that if they start wrestling, regardless of who wins, there’s no way in hell he’s gonna be able to hide how it makes him feel. In his shorts.</p>
<p>So he makes a show of grumbling, but swivels on the cushion and drapes his calves across Bucky’s lap. “What, you want me to massage your knees?” Bucky says. “Roll over.”</p>
<p>Steve grumbles some more, but rolls over onto his stomach. <em>This should be okay</em>, he thinks<em>. At least I’m lying face down</em>. But the minute Bucky’s hands start kneading the muscles in his calves, he realizes that he’s made a grave mistake. It’s going to take all of the self-control he possesses to lie still and not squirm, shiver, or moan. He digs his fingers into the couch cushion and holds on for dear life.</p>
<p>He stops paying attention to the movie almost immediately. Bucky’s hands are on him, touching him tenderly, but with purpose, his dexterous fingers finding and releasing all of the tension that Steve had built up on his run. All of the tension that has built up over the past two weeks. Steve allows a little sigh of contentment to escape into the throw pillow under his cheek.</p>
<p>Bucky’s hands move down to his ankles, and then his feet, but the minute his fingers brush Steve’s arches, he jerks away so hard that he almost kicks Bucky in the face and has to throw out a hand to steady himself on the coffee table. Bucky grabs both of Steve’s ankles in his metal hand and laughs out loud. “Just checking you were still ticklish.”</p>
<p>“You bastard,” Steve grits out between clenched teeth. “I’m in a really vulnerable position here, I’m trusting you not to take advantage of me.”</p>
<p>Bucky gasps theatrically. “Steven, I would never.” He lets Steve’s ankles go, and it’s the absence of the constraining hand that makes Steve think, for the very first time, that maybe he likes being held like that. He’s definitely too excited, now. At this rate he’s going to have to resort to that old standby, pretending to fall asleep.</p>
<p>Bucky’s hands move up his calves again, gentler this time, smoothing the remaining tension away with his fingers rather than kneading and pressing. Time passes, and Steve is starting to feel drowsy. Luke hasn’t even come to rescue Leia yet, and Steve knows that, one way or another, he’s not going to make it to the end of the movie. Then slowly, tentatively, Bucky moves his hands up past the thin, ticklish skin on the back on Steve’s knees to his thighs. Steve freezes, immediately alert, tense in spite of his self-control.</p>
<p>Bucky immediately lifts his hands. “Not okay?” he murmurs.</p>
<p>“No,” Steve says, his voice cracking under the strain of forcing himself to breathe normally. “No, it’s okay. Keep going.” He clears his throat. “Please.”</p>
<p>Bucky hesitates a moment, but lowers his hands again and begins to push with his thumbs, from the back of Steve’s knees up his hamstrings, under the hem of his shorts, rolling the tension away before him. It hurts so bad and it feels so good. Steve’s been to plenty of massage therapists before, but no one has ever made him feel like this. He allows himself a carefully crafted groan, pain mixed with relief, though a tiny bit of pleasure sneaks in just to spite him. “Jesus, I didn’t realize how tight my hamstrings were,” he grits out between his teeth. “I need to get better about stretching.”</p>
<p>Bucky hums ambiguously. He keeps pressing with his thumbs, but gradually shifts to using the blades of his hands, and then his palms, his touch lighter and lighter. Eventually, Steve drifts off to sleep, and his last coherent thought is that now he knows what desensitization therapy feels like.</p>
<p>Later, much later, a month later, Steve realizes, first, that his muscle pain never lasts for more than a few hours no matter how far he runs because of the serum, and, second, that Bucky knows this just as well as he does.</p><hr/>
<p>Now that June is in full swing, flowers start appearing in drinking glasses around the house. Cosmos, nasturtiums, sunflowers, and French marigolds in shades of red, orange, and yellow. Coreopsis and zinnias, pink and mauve. Delphiniums, giant cones of blue and white, for which Bucky commandeers their water pitcher because the racemes are too top-heavy for drinking glasses. Cornflowers, the color of Steve’s eyes, which he learns because one day Bucky holds a bunch of them up beside his face, tilts his head, considering, and then hums in satisfaction. “Yep, that’s what I thought. The same shade of blue.”</p>
<p>Steve learns the names because Bucky tells him every day when he changes the bouquets. Marigolds are Steve’s favorites—even though they are the most unassuming, the workhorses of the flower garden—because of their spicy, intoxicating scent. He often finds himself in the backyard, holding a freshly-plucked marigold up to his nose, rolling the calyx between his fingers to crush the heady scent out.</p>
<p>There are glasses of flowers on the kitchen counter and on the dining table, and a bowl of short-stemmed nasturtiums on the coffee table. There’s always a bunch on the dresser in Steve’s room. Sometimes he wakes up in the morning and the flowers on the dresser are fresh, and he knows that Bucky’s woken up first and has been out in the garden. More often, they are mysteriously replaced at some unknown point during the day, as if they’d been spirited in by elves.</p>
<p>One afternoon, Steve goes looking for a clean drinking glass and can’t find one. The cabinet where they keep them is empty, and the dishwasher holds only two smudged, dirty cups. He pulls a ceramic coffee mug down from the shelf, fills it up with water from the tap, and then stands at the sink, lost in thought. After a moment he pushes open the screen door and walks out onto the deck. Bucky is weeding the bed closest to the house, his fingers working deftly around the crisp heads of lettuce. He’s crouched down on his heels, his grey t-shirt riding up his back. There’s a dark V across his shoulders where it’s soaked with sweat, and the strip of sun-browned skin that the treacherous hem exposes is beaded with moisture. His running shorts with their split side seams leave even less to Steve’s imagination than his plain black boxer briefs.</p>
<p>“Jesus christ”, Steve whispers involuntarily. He’s leaning up against the sun-warmed siding of the house and his mind, relentless in its torture, starts to whisper, <em>What would he taste like, if you went down there right now and licked him?</em> He can feel himself start to sweat.</p>
<p>Bucky looks back over his shoulder, the side of his mouth quirked up. “Hey, Stevie. You got something to say, or you just out here to enjoy the show?”</p>
<p>Steve jumps a little and the water in his mug sloshes over the side, soaking his bare foot. He shakes it off and clears his throat. “I, uh, I just wanted to tell you that I’m gonna go run some errands. I’ll be back in maybe an hour?” He spins on his heel and walks back through the screen door, Bucky’s low chuckle trailing after him.</p>
<p>One of his meandering morning runs the previous week had taken him by a small pottery studio on the other side of Park Slope. It had a sunny yellow door and a blue striped awning, and the cups and plates in the window were colorful and bright. The first time he ran past, he thought “Bucky would like that stuff,” and the second time, on his way back home, he made a note of the address.</p>
<p>He’s in and out in under ten minutes, having found exactly what he wanted as soon as he’d walked in the door. The potter graciously wraps his things in rough brown paper and then in bubble wrap so that they won’t get broken if he hits a pothole on the way home.</p>
<p>When he gets back home, the shower is running upstairs. He drops the bags on the dining room table, and when he hears the bathroom door open, he walks into the hall and calls, “Hey, I’m back, and I’ve got a surprise for you.”</p>
<p>Bucky is standing at the top of the stairs, his long hair dripping around his shoulders, his skin damp and shining, a towel wrapped low around his hips. Steve swallows heavily; in his ears, it sounds like the crash of a bottle broken on the edge of a bar, and he hopes to god that Bucky can’t hear him up there. He forces his face to keep smiling, but he can feel it turning a little wild. “Ooh,” says Bucky, “I love surprises.” He waggles his eyebrows. “Be down in a minute.” Then he walks into his bedroom and shuts the door.</p>
<p>A thousand images flash through Steve’s head, each one worse than the last. He’s at the top of the stairs, reaching his hand out slowly, slowly, taking hold of the towel and gently undoing the tucked-in tail that keeps it from slipping all the way off. He’s at the top of the stairs, crowding Bucky against the wall, whipping the towel off roughly. He’s in the bathroom, and Bucky is stepping out of the shower, rivulets of water pouring off his body, Bucky is in the shower, covered in soap suds, his eyes closed and his head tilted back under the stream, Steve is in the shower, too, reaching out with his hand to…</p>
<p>With a jerk, he comes to his senses and realizes that he’s still standing in the hallway and Bucky is turning the knob to open his bedroom door. Steve knows his face is an open book, and he knows that he can’t let Bucky see it. Not to mention that he’s starting to get hard, <em>fucking hair trigger, </em>he thinks, livid and mortified. He sprints lightly into the kitchen and stands in front of the coffee maker, not thinking about his cock, not thinking about the towel—<em>stop thinking about that fucking towel—</em>looking at Bucky’s seven different bags of coffee lined up beside it, trying to think through the merits of light vs French roast in order to distract himself. <em>Let’s see, light roast is… light. And French roast is… French? Dark? Burnt? Fuck, I don’t know shit about coffee.</em></p>
<p>Bucky’s voice comes in from the dining room. “What are you doing drinking coffee at this time of day?”</p>
<p>Steve clears his throat artlessly, then says, “Oh, I dunno, just felt like it. Want some?”</p>
<p>“Sure, I guess, if you’re offering.”</p>
<p>Steve pulls a random bag of coffee out of the lineup and starts to fill the filter. This is okay. This is fine. Crisis averted.</p>
<p>Paper crinkles as Bucky rummages through the bags on the table. “Is this the surprise?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” Steve says, slotting the carafe in underneath the basket. He flips the switch and walks into the dining room, then pulls all of the bubble-wrapped bundles out and lays them on the table. “Go ahead.”</p>
<p>“Jeez, Stevie, is it my birthday or something? I have amnesia, you know, I really have no idea.” His tone is light and sarcastic, but his face tells a different story. He looks really pleased—touched, even, and his mouth is crinkled up the way he does when he’s trying to hide a smile. He picks up the first package and carefully unsticks the tape holding the bubble wrap closed, then pulls it off and folds it in quarters before sliding off the brown paper. Inside, there’s a vase, which he turns carefully in his hands, his metal fingers making a soft <em>clink clink</em> on the shiny glaze. It’s tall with a tapered neck and big blue dots on a yellow background. He really is smiling now, soft and happy.</p>
<p>“Is this for the flowers?” He darts a look at Steve from under his eyelashes, turning the vase over and over in his hands.</p>
<p>“Yep, it was because…” <em>Because</em> <em>I love you. </em>Steve clears his throat. “It was either this or never being able to use the water pitcher or find a clean drinking glass again.”</p>
<p>“Thanks, Steve.” He sounds shy, and a little embarrassed.</p>
<p>Steve feels awkward, the worst kind of awkward, no idea what to say or how to act, torn between the desperate need to keep mum and the overwhelming need to betray his feelings. He wants to give Bucky a hug, and maybe a month ago he would have done it without thinking twice about it, but all touches are now charged with an illicit electricity. There’s part of him that just wants to go back to doing what he did naturally before that night in May when everything changed, but he doesn’t know how. In the span of three short weeks, he’s forgotten what it’s like to not be in love with his best friend.</p>
<p>So he compromises, reaching out and squeezing Bucky’s arm, and says, “There are more, why don’t you open the rest?”</p>
<p>In total there are two tall, heavy vases, the yellow and blue one and another that’s half green with big blue dots and half white with tiny black points. There are four smaller vases in red, blue, yellow and purple, some with spots and some with stripes, and two strange-looking bowls with concave lids that have holes in the top. Bucky turns one over in his hands and glances at Steve with his eyebrows drawn up. “What’s this?”</p>
<p>“Those are bud bowls. Or at least that’s what the potter told me. They’re for things with short stems, like your nasturtiums.”</p>
<p>Bucky’s grin splits his face from ear to ear. He half-turns toward Steve and wraps his arms around Steve’s waist, squeezing him tight. “Thanks, Steve. That’s real sweet of you.”</p>
<p>Now that Steve has an excuse, he wraps an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and squeezes him back. “Yeah, yeah. Jerk.” But even the epithet has so much desperate affection in it that Steve bites back a grimace, and he lets Bucky go so that he can walk into the kitchen to pour them both a cup of coffee and compose himself a little.</p>
<p>Later that night, during debriefing, after they eat dinner and demolish a half-gallon of ice cream and watch some Netflix, Steve tells Bucky about running past the pottery studio in Park Slope. Bucky lifts his metal hand from Steve’s shoulder and squeezes the back of his neck lightly. “Thanks again, Steve. It was a nice surprise.”</p>
<p>Steve knows his face looks like a happy red sun, but the lights are off in the hall and he hopes that Bucky can’t actually feel the heat radiating off of him. He rests his cheek all-too-briefly against the side of Bucky’s warm head, and says, lightly, “Sure, Buck.”</p>
<p>But what he really means is, <em>I love you, I love you, I love you.</em></p><hr/>
<p>Steve starts coming home nearly every day with gifts for Bucky. He can’t help himself, every time he sees something that he knows Bucky would like, he thinks about the look on his face when he unwrapped the vases, and all of a sudden, he’s holding out his debit card and taking a shopping bag from a smiling clerk.</p>
<p>One day, after training, he goes to the Strand to look for a book that Pepper had recommended to him called <em>The Decline of the United States Military After Captain America</em>. He’s not sure he actually wants to read it, but the author is a friend of Pepper’s who lectures at NYU. “At least read the book,” she had said, “and if you like it, then maybe you’d want to talk to him. He’s got a different perspective. Not what you would expect from a military historian.” She pats him on the arm and looks so wise and perceptive that Steve has a moment’s panicked thought about omniscience and mind-reading abilities. <em>Wouldn’t that be embarrassing.</em></p>
<p>So Steve is looking for the section on military history when he runs across the comics. <em>Bucky likes comics</em>, his brain supplies helpfully<em>.</em> Thirty minutes later, he’s crossing the Manhattan Bridge with <em>The Complete Calvin and Hobbes</em> strapped down on the back of the bike before he realizes that he’d forgotten to look for the book Pepper had sent him for in the first place.</p>
<p>Another day, it’s a t-shirt with a screen printed bee and the words “SAVE THE BEES” that he found in a weird organic food pop-up, then a set of fancy Bluetooth speakers for the kitchen, and two days later, a punnet of raspberries from the market. Then there are the countless doodles, torn out of his sketchbook or dashed off on the backs of receipts and scraps of paper. [PP1] Marigolds, sunflowers, a sequoia, a fox looking shrewd and enigmatic. He leaves them on the kitchen counter in the morning, a zucchini as a paperweight, before he goes to the Tower. Weeks later, he goes into Bucky’s room to drop off clean sheets for his bed and finds them all taped to the inside face of his bedside table, right next to his pillow.</p>
<p>On a Friday toward the middle of the month, Bucky says offhandedly at breakfast, “Did my ma used to make a fruit dish that had oatmeal on the top?”</p>
<p>Steve thinks for a minute; this is the general procedure that they’ve developed for recovering memories. Bucky remembers something small: a sound, a smell, a line of dialogue. Steve tries to fill in the gaps until something clicks, and then when he’s sure he’s got the right memory, he describes it in as much detail as possible. Sometimes this prompts Bucky to remember more things, or sometimes the memory comes flooding back in technicolor. But even if it doesn’t, he’s got the memory second-hand from Steve, and that’s usually good enough for him.</p>
<p>“Well, we used to eat oatmeal all the time ‘cause it was cheap, and sometimes we would put canned peaches on top if we could get them. Sometimes fresh fruit, but that was usually reserved for eating out of hand.”</p>
<p>Bucky frowns, unfocusing his eyes in the way he does when he’s trying to access a memory. “No, the fruit was definitely on the bottom, and the oatmeal was on the top. It was crunchy.”</p>
<p>Steve snaps his fingers. “Oh, yeah, I got it, you’re thinking about fruit crisp. Yeah, your ma made fruit crisp when we could beg some of the day’s-end cast-offs from the grocer. It was great, cut-up peaches or apples on the bottom and oats on the top.” Steve hums appreciatively and Bucky licks his lips.</p>
<p>“It’s stone fruit season, maybe I’ll look for a recipe and try to make one,” he says, tapping his chin thoughtfully.</p>
<p>“Sure.” Steve shovels the last of his cereal into his mouth. “But the Cortelyou market is only open on Sundays and the one on the other side of the park is only tomorrow. So what if I stop by the one in Union Square on the way home and pick up some fruit there? I don’t have any meetings today, nothing but training this morning, so I can swing by the market and be back by lunch.”</p>
<p>Bucky gives him a thumbs up and says, “Perfect, but I don’t know how many peaches I’m gonna need. How about I text you?”</p>
<p>Steve stands up and carries their bowls out to the kitchen sink. “Sounds good. Now I gotta go or I’m gonna be late.”</p><hr/>
<p>[Steve]: Hey, how many peaches? I’m at the market<br/>
[Bucky]: Ah yeah sorry fell down a rabbit hole<br/>
[Bucky]: Uhhhhh<br/>
[Bucky]: The recipe says 4 cups, I don’t know how much that is<br/>
[Bucky]: Get 5 lbs to be safe and cause I found another recipe for peach pie<br/>
[Bucky]: And cherry pie<br/>
[Bucky]: Plum cake<br/>
[Bucky]: So many cakes and pies<br/>
[Bucky]: Steeeeeeeeeve I am so hungry hurry up get home<br/>
[Steve]: You know you can go ahead and eat lunch, you don’t have to wait for me<br/>
[Bucky]: Course I do what kinda suggestion is that<br/>
[Steve]: Ok fine 30-40 min<br/>
[Steve]: ty<br/>
</p><hr/>
<p>In the end, Steve buys the five pounds of peaches, plus another three pounds of plums, three pounds of nectarines, two pounds of cherries, two pounds of apricots, and four punnets of strawberries. The lady running the market stall gives him a big cardboard fruit box to carry it all in and helps him strap it down to the back of the motorcycle, and then ties another box upside-down over the top so that, hopefully, he won’t lose it all at the first pothole.</p>
<p>When he comes in the front door, Bucky yells, “Finally! I’m starving! I made Philly cheesesteaks and I’ve been eye-fucking them for the last five minutes.”</p>
<p>Steve makes a face. “Jesus, that sounds disgusting. Lemme put the fruit down first and then I’ll be ready to eat.”</p>
<p>He carries the box into the kitchen and Bucky’s jaw drops. “Christ, did you clean the market out or what?”</p>
<p>Steve protests, “Hey, I was hungry, too, my eyes were bigger than my stomach!”</p>
<p>“I can’t possibly make pies out of all of this fruit, what am I supposed to do with it?” Bucky’s standing with his hands on his hips, looking simultaneously miffed and delighted.</p>
<p>Steve shuffles his feet and looks at the floor. “Weeeeeell,” he says, drawing the word out, “I kinda anticipated that might be a problem, so I asked the lady at the fruit stand, and she gave me an idea and helped me order something on my phone that could help with that.”</p>
<p>Bucky narrows his eyes. “What?”</p>
<p>“Um, it’s a surprise. But it’s gonna come this afternoon, I got same-day delivery.” Steve starts unpacking the box, turning his back so that Bucky can’t see the way he’s kicking himself for going overboard. <em>It’s too much, it’s too obvious</em>, he thinks, the pit of his stomach a frothy milkshake of anticipation mingled with longing.</p>
<p>“Is it a private chef? ‘Cause otherwise I’m still gonna have to stand in front of the hot oven all day to turn all this fruit into crisps and pies and whatnot.” Bucky leaves Steve to finish unpacking and takes the plates with the sandwiches out to the little table on the back deck, letting the door shut behind him with a bang.</p>
<p>Steve tosses the empty cardboard box into the front hall for recycling and then gets the pitcher of green tea out of the fridge. He carries it out to the deck with two glasses and says, “C’mon, Buck, you’re gonna love it. There’s nothing hot about it. And I’ll help, I know how to cook, too.”</p>
<p>“This ain’t cooking, this is baking, and baking is a science, Steve. And you know I’m the brains of this outfit. But I guess since you’re the brawn, you can chop things up and cream butter and whatnot with your big muscles.”</p>
<p>Steve’s heart skips a beat, but he covers it up by shaking his fist menacingly. “I’ll show you big muscles,” he says, and Bucky bursts out laughing before he schools his face back into an unimpressed scowl.</p>
<p>“You already do, that shirt leaves jack shit to the imagination. Now sit down and eat your fucking sandwich before I shut you up with it.”</p><hr/>
<p>After lunch, Steve cuts up the peaches and measures out sugar and flour while Bucky prepares the oat topping. They listen to <em>Graceland</em> while they work, and Bucky sings along to every song, occasionally bumping Steve with his hip. When “You Can Call Me Al” comes on, he grabs Steve’s sticky hand and, wrapping one arm around his waist, dances him around the kitchen, singing <em>If you'll be my bodyguard/ I can be your long lost pal/ I can call you Betty/ And Betty, when you call me, you can call me Al</em> while Steve laughs until he’s weak at the knees and stumbling over both of their feet.</p>
<p>Right when they get the crisp into the oven and Bucky is scowling at the mountain of fruit that remains, the doorbell rings. There’s a delivery guy on the stoop with a huge box that Bucky takes while Steve signs the delivery slip. He sets it on the counter in the kitchen and hands Steve a pair of scissors, but Steve says, “Nope, I bought this for you. Well, it’s gonna benefit me a ton. But it’s mostly for you, so you open it.”</p>
<p>Bucky shrugs but looks secretly pleased and attacks the packing tape with the scissors, gaping when he finally gets the box open.</p>
<p>“You bought an ice cream maker?” He looks up at Steve like it’s 1936 and he’s just found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk.</p>
<p>“Yep,” Steve says happily. “And I got the good kind with a compressor so it’s always ready to go and we can make more than one batch per day.”</p>
<p>“That’s genius!” Bucky swats Steve’s shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.</p>
<p>Steve fights the urge to puff himself up like a bullfrog out of sheer, giddy pride. “Aww, and here I thought <em>you</em> were the brains of this outfit.” Bucky gives him the finger.</p>
<p>In the end, they decide to make apricot, nectarine, and strawberry ice cream, plus a cherry pie and a plum cake. Steve has to go out for milk, cream, sugar, butter, and a lemon, and then again for more milk and sugar and almond extract and a gadget to pit cherries that Bucky had seen on the internet. Bucky listens to music and scalds milk and chops fruit and gets progressively stickier.</p>
<p>They finish the whole peach crisp between the two of them after dinner, sitting on the couch watching <em>Deep Space Nine</em> reruns and using spoons to eat straight out of the pan balanced on their knees. Afterward, Bucky rubs his stomach and says, “Now that I’ve scratched that itch, I’m not so excited about everything else we’ve gotta eat.”</p>
<p>“Tomorrow’s Saturday, why don’t we invite Nat and the rest over to help us? We can put it in the group chat, see who’s around.”</p>
<p>Bucky heaves a contented sigh and transfers the empty pan to the coffee table. Then he leans over until his head is resting on Steve’s shoulder and reaches a hand out to squeeze his knee. “See? Told you that you were a genius.”</p>
<p>Steve had, amazingly, through all the chopping and slicing and mixing and running around, managed to forget the way he feels about Bucky. He had forgotten the twisted knot of love that feels, now, like a heavy fist ready to punch its way out of his papier-mâché heart. All of a sudden, Bucky’s hand on his thigh feels as heavy as an ingot of gold, and the smell of his hair, clean sweat and flour and peaches, washes over Steve like a tidal wave. He can feel the heat pooling in his gut as Bucky drums his fingers softly right where the hem of his shorts rides up his thigh, and he stands up so fast he almost loses his balance, stumbling into the kitchen and making some excuse about needing to check on the last batch of ice cream.</p><hr/>
<p>[Steve]: Hey guys, I bought a ton of fruit at the market this morning, so now we have pie and cake and three different kinds of ice cream that need to be eaten.<br/>
[Steve]: Anybody wanna come over tomorrow and help us out??<br/>
[Clint]: Whaaaaaaat<br/>
[Clint]: Yeaaaaaaaa babeeeeeeyyyyyyyy what time<br/>
[Clint]: Can I bring Lucky<br/>
[Nat]: I can come but only in the afternoon<br/>
[Nat]: I’ve got a thing in the morning<br/>
[Bucky]: Who’s Lucky<br/>
[Clint]: What thing???<br/>
[Nat]: Wouldn’t you like to know.<br/>
[Nat]: jk it’s a mani-pedi<br/>
[Clint]: Lucky’s my dog<br/>
[Steve]: Come after lunch, maybe 3ish?<br/>
[Bucky]: YEAH BRING LUCKY<br/>
[Nat]: Perfect<br/>
[Bruce]: Sounds good, what should we bring?<br/>
[Steve]: Drinks, anything else you might want to eat?<br/>
[Tony]: I love ice cream!!! I’ll bring stuff for mojitos.<br/>
[Pepper]: We have a late lunch tomorrow in DC with the investment subcommittee :(<br/>
[Pepper]: We won’t be able to make it, guys, but I’m sure you’ll have tons of fun!<br/>
[Tony]: NOOOOOOOO<br/>
[Tony]: Pep, just tell them I blew the lab up again.<br/>
[Tony:] And I’m in the hospital again.<br/>
[Tony]: Cause I got a concussion or something<br/>
[Pepper]: Nope<br/>
[Sam]: Really? REALLY??? I’m gonna be visiting in two months, couldn’t you wait??<br/>
[Bucky]: Steve bought me a fancy pants ice cream maker I can make some more<br/>
[Sam]: Okay, that’s cool then.<br/>
[Nat]: Steve sure knows how to treat a guy right<br/>
[Steve]: NAT, I swear to fuckin CHRIST<br/>
[Clint]: language<br/>
[Tony]: Language!!!<br/>
[Nat]: Language!<br/>
[Steve left the group AVENGERS AND OTHER ASSORTED ASSHOLES]<br/>
</p><hr/>
<p>The doorbell rings at a quarter to three. Steve is out on the deck, moving chairs around so that there are enough places for everybody to sit, so Bucky says, “I’ll get it.”</p>
<p>When Steve comes through the kitchen and into the hallway a few moments later, he sees Nat and Clint standing in the entryway and Bucky on his back on the hall rug, being mauled by a large golden retriever. He’s got his hands on the dog’s face and is waggling it back and forth while the dog tries desperately to lick him. He’s crooning into the dog’s wide-open mouth, “Look at you, look at you, what a big baby you are, yes you are, oh my god, what a handsome boy, look at you!”</p>
<p>Nat elbows Clint when Steve walks in and says, “Ten bucks says Steve is gonna get an animal before the end of the summer.”</p>
<p>Clint grins. “Fifteen says he’s gonna get one before the end of July.”</p>
<p>Steve scoffs, mock-offended. “Guys, don’t start a betting pool right in front of me!” But then Bucky looks up and says, “You gotta meet Lucky. Sit down,” and grabs him around the back of his knee and pulls until Steve collapses cross-legged on the floor. Lucky immediately throws himself into Steve’s lap and starts trying to kiss his face off.</p>
<p>“Jesus, Lucky,” Clint says. “Give the guy a break. Sit.”</p>
<p>Lucky sits, his tail trying to wag a hole through the floor.</p>
<p>“Lucky, shake.”</p>
<p>Lucky politely extends a paw for Steve to shake, and he hears Bucky in the background whisper, “Oh my god.”</p>
<p>“Aww, baby boy, that’s enough,” Clint says. “I’m gonna take him out back so he doesn’t shed all over the floor.”</p>
<p>Bucky pops to his feet. “Alright, I’m coming, too.”</p>
<p>Once the screen door in the kitchen bangs shut, Natasha turns to Steve and narrows her eyes. “Steve? Is there something you want to tell me? Hmm?”</p>
<p>Steve stands up and brushes some imaginary dog hair off of his shirt. Then he looks at the door, then the stairs, then the ceiling, before his eyes come to rest on Natasha’s feet. She’s wearing black Converse hi-tops with flames on them. “Uh, no?”</p>
<p>Natasha smirks. “Don’t lie to me, Steve. I can see through you like a squeegeed window.” She steps into his space and links her arm through his. “So, you finally got your head screwed on straight and realized that Bucky Barnes is the most eligible ex-assassin in the five boroughs.”</p>
<p>“Nat…”</p>
<p>“When did you figure it out? Does he know? Are you guys…” She extends the index finger of one hand and makes a circle with the fingers of her other hand and brings them together in a way that makes Steve blush crimson immediately. He whips his arm out of hers and gasps, scandalized, “Natasha!!”</p>
<p>Her smirk grows deeper. “Okay, guess not. Seriously, though. Spill the beans.”</p>
<p>Steve looks through the kitchen to the screen door. Then he looks at Natasha again. Her eyebrow is cocked, but she’s not smirking anymore. “You know you don’t have to tell me anything, Steve. But sometimes it’s nice to have a friend you can talk about boys with.”</p>
<p>He feels like he’s opened the shower curtain and found himself in front of a performance review committee. “I, I don’t, I mean, wait, how did you know I was bi?” The look she gives him is so flat it’s almost dead. “Okay, it’s a spy thing. Alright. So you know.” Somehow, it doesn’t shock him as much as he feels like it should. Of course she knows. It’s right that she knows. And, what’s more, now he doesn’t have to agonize over how to come out to her. The thought makes him perk up a little.</p>
<p>“So…” Natasha prompts gently.</p>
<p>“Yeah. Um.” Steve rubs the back of his neck and feels his face heat up again. “I just… nothing much about the way I feel has changed, I don’t think. I’ve always loved him, since we were little kids, forever. He’s always been”—he waves his hand around vaguely—“Bucky. You know. My best friend.”</p>
<p>Natasha nods, encouraging him to go on.</p>
<p>“But all of a sudden, one day, it hit me like a, like a Mack truck”—he lowers his voice to a whisper—“that I didn’t just love him. That I was in love with him. And everything that comes with that. Like, I always knew he was a looker, but now it’s like I <em>know</em> he’s a looker.” He shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “If you know what I mean.”</p>
<p>“I do,” she says, her voice neutral, encouraging.</p>
<p>Steve grabs both her arms and shakes her, just a tiny bit. “Nat, it’s driving me crazy. I can’t sleep, I can’t stop thinking about it, sometimes I can’t even be in the same room with him. I don’t know what to do. I’m gonna go round the bend. I’m gonna lose my mind.” His voice breaks into a whine. He feels he’s been thrown back to the worst part of adolescence to live his most embarrassing moments all over again.</p>
<p>She extracts her arms from his grip and pats him on the shoulder. “Does he know?”</p>
<p>“No! God. I hope not.”</p>
<p>“Why not? Do you think he would reject you?”</p>
<p>Steve runs his hands through his hair, again and again. “Yes? I mean, he’s straight.” Natasha quirks a disbelieving eyebrow. “Nat, really, he’s only ever been with women. Lots and lots of them, before the war. He only likes women,” he finishes, pathetically.</p>
<p>“Steve.” He opens his mouth, but she holds up a hand. “Steve, listen to me. Which one of us is the super-spy who can read a person like a book and which one of us is the lunkheaded frisbee-thrower?” Steve frowns and Natasha goes on without waiting for an answer. “So now that we’ve established my credentials versus yours, you should listen to me when I tell you that that man”—she points through the kitchen doorway toward the backyard—“is not straight.”</p>
<p>“Nat,” he says pleadingly, clasping his hands together in front of his chest in supplication. “Don’t tell me that.”</p>
<p>“Why not?” she asks, folding her arms over her chest. “What are you planning to do, pine away in secret? Love him from afar for forever? I know you, Steve, you self-martyring bastard.” Her voice is soft, with a hint of pity, and he can’t find it in himself to take offense at something she’s completely right about, anyway.</p>
<p>“Don’t give me false hope,” he says, and he doesn’t mean to sound miserable, but there it is.</p>
<p>“I’m not giving you false hope,” she says, still soft, but a little annoyed, now. “But you won’t believe that until you find it out for yourself. And you know there’s only one way to do that.”</p>
<p>“Nat, I can’t. Fuck.” He starts pacing in a tight circle around the hallway. “What if I ruin it? This?” He waves his hand at the house around him. “I’ve never been so happy in my entire life. This is everything I’ve ever wanted, good friends and enough food to eat and a good house and Bucky in the next room. What if I say something and I fuck it all up?”</p>
<p>Natasha grabs him by the bicep and maneuvers him over to the stairs, bearing down on him like a miniature bulldozer until he sits heavily on the third step. “Steve. Even discounting the history you have together, even if we only take into consideration the last six months, I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Maybe he’s not in love with you the way you’re in love with him. But he still looks at you like you’re the light of his life. You can’t fuck that up.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but what if…”</p>
<p>Natasha interrupts him. “Steve. I can’t tell you what to do. I’m not your therapist, who you should, by the way, be talking to about this. I’m just a friend you can talk about boys with. But I think you should consider it.”</p>
<p>He runs his hands through his hair again. “I dunno. Okay. I’ll consider it.”</p>
<p>She nods. “Good.”</p>
<p>He heaves a sigh, shakes his head to clear the air. “Okay, so what about you?”</p>
<p>“What about me?”</p>
<p>“Well, a smart lady I know told me that sometimes it’s nice to have a friend you can talk about boys with.”</p>
<p>Natasha gives him a smile, small but genuine. “That’s heteronormative,” she says. “But if there’s ever a person I want to talk about, you’ll be the first one I tell.”</p><hr/>
<p>That night, during debriefing, Bucky says, “Steve, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve gotten into this weird habit of bringing me presents and shit all the time.”</p>
<p>Steve tenses up immediately. “Uhh,” he says.</p>
<p>“Don’t get me wrong, I really like it, it’s very nice.” Bucky snickers into Steve’s collar. “Although it’s just more evidence that I really am your sugar baby.”</p>
<p>“Buck,” Steve groans, “you can’t be my sugar baby, you’re older than I am.”</p>
<p>Bucky straightens up, leans back a little, and cocks his head at Steve. “Oh really? Are those the rules?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” Steve says, popping the p.</p>
<p>“Uh huh,” Bucky says, skeptically. He drums his fingers on Steve’s shoulder. “Well, if I’m not your sugar baby I guess that makes me your housewife.” He sighs, put-upon. “Not as glamorous, I admit, but certainly more…”</p>
<p>Steve pinches right at the soft part of his waist and Bucky twists away, then stomps on Steve’s toes with the heel of his foot.</p>
<p>“Ow, fuck, jesus, you jerk!”</p>
<p>They’re both laughing hard now, and it takes Steve a minute to get himself under control before he can say, “Did any of that have a point?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Bucky says, wiping his eyes. “The point is that you like to give me things, and I like to get things, so this is a mutually beneficial arrangement, right?”</p>
<p>“I… guess?” Steve says apprehensively. He has no idea where this is going, and he doesn’t know if he’s going to like what he finds when they get there.</p>
<p>“So it can be even more mutual and beneficial if I tell you something specific that I want and you give it to me.”</p>
<p>“Okay?” He’s even more suspicious, now. Bucky’s got that wild gleam in his eye that has meant trouble for the last ninety years. “What do you want?”</p>
<p>“I want Lucky.”</p>
<p>“You can’t have Lucky, he’s Clint’s dog and I’m not gonna steal him.”</p>
<p>Bucky shrugs. “Okay, then I want another dog.” Then he clasps his hands together and tucks them under his chin. “Please? Please, Stevie, please?”</p>
<p>Steve frowns. “I dunno, Buck, dogs are a lot of work.”</p>
<p>“I’m not a child, Steven, I know that. Jesus, you sound like my ma, not my sugar daddy.”</p>
<p>Steve grinds his teeth and grabs Bucky by the shoulders, shaking him like a rag doll. “Repeat after me: YOU. ARE. NOT. MY. SUGAR DADDY.” Bucky’s head bobbles back and forth and he giggles like a monkey for a second before he schools his face.</p>
<p>“Okay, okay. Fine. You are not my sugar daddy,” he deadpans, and then gives Steve an exaggerated wink.</p>
<p>Steve pulls his hands together in front of his face, fingers touching the bridge of his nose in an attitude of prayer. “Give me strength not to punch this asshole in the face,” he says, and adds, internally, <em>with my mouth.</em> And then, to cover up his irritation and consternation and the desperate need to put his mouth where it doesn’t belong, he pulls Bucky back into a crushing hug, making it a little more painful than necessary. “Okay, so was there a point to all this? You want a dog?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, or a cat, or a rabbit, or a tortoise. Anything, really. I need a pet. I need something to love.”</p>
<p>“You have…” Steve starts, and bites the word <em>me</em> off the end of the sentence so quickly that he almost chokes on it. “…the garden?” He finishes, painfully.</p>
<p>Bucky pulls his head back again to look at Steve. The corner of his mouth is quirked up, but there’s an indecipherable glint in his eye. “Yeah, I’ve got the garden, but the garden don’t love me back.”</p>
<p>“And a tortoise will?”</p>
<p>“Steve, you’re missing the point.”</p>
<p>“Which is?”</p>
<p>“I need something to take care of. Something that needs me.” His voice has gone soft, and he lays his head back down on Steve’s shoulder, his face obscured.</p>
<p><em>You’ve got me</em>, Steve thinks wildly. <em>I need you. So much. Please.</em> But out loud, he says, “I don’t think it’s a bad idea. But I think we should sleep on it.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Bucky says, the hot whisper of his breath like a ghostly caress on the sensitive skin of Steve’s neck. “Thanks, Stevie.”</p><hr/>
<p>Steve continues to slowly lose his mind and what little control he has over himself. Bucky is everywhere; Steve can’t get rid of him even when he’s not physically present. One day, running out the door, ten minutes late, he picks up Bucky’s helmet by accident and has to ride all the way to Manhattan surrounded and overpowered by the scent of his orange blossom shampoo. Once he parks in the Tower garage, he has to sit on the bike for five full minutes and pretend to be engrossed in something on his phone before his hard-on disappears. Another day, he’s sitting in Fury’s office in SHIELD headquarters when it hits him, like a bullet train, that there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the underwear he pulled out of the dryer and put on this morning was cupping Bucky’s perfect ass yesterday. He grinds his teeth so hard they squeak and snaps a pencil in his fist. Fury narrows his one good eye and Steve feels a drop of sweat bead at his temple.</p>
<p>And now, for the first time, he curses the stamina that the serum gave him. His showers go from a functional ten minutes to twenty, thirty minutes. Once, after he’s been in the bathroom with the water running for thirty-five minutes, he hears a knock on the door. “Hey,” Bucky calls, “you die in there or what?”</p>
<p>“No!” Steve yells, but it comes out strangled, like he’s got a hand around his own throat. Which he doesn’t. That’s not really his thing, and he should know, because he’s been thinking about what his thing is non-stop for weeks, now.</p>
<p>“Jesus, Steve, I know I don’t pay the bills here, but if you gotta jerk off, at least do it without the water running so you don’t drain the reservoir dry.”</p>
<p>“I’m not jerking off!” This is true, but only because he’d dropped his cock like a hot coal as soon as Bucky knocked on the door.</p>
<p>“Sure, pal. Then you won’t mind me coming in to borrow some toothpaste. Mine’s all gone.”</p>
<p>Bucky flings the door open and starts rummaging around in the cabinet under the sink. Steve thanks his lucky stars that the bathroom has an old-fashioned shower curtain set-up and not one of those modern glass partitions. The blue shower curtain with its mermaid house party design, bought out of desperation when he’d first moved in, is silly, but it’s opaque, and it does the trick of shielding him from prying eyes.</p>
<p>“Do you have any extra tubes? I don’t wanna take yours, but I’m down to the last drop. Milked it dry. I mean, I squeezed and squeezed it, from the base all the way to the tip, but I can’t get any…”</p>
<p>“Get the fuck out of my bathroom,” Steve growls over the sound of the running water, and Bucky cackles.</p>
<p>“Well, maybe if I beat it off, no, sorry, beat it on the counter…”</p>
<p>Steve whips his head around the edge of the shower curtain, bares his teeth, and snarls.</p>
<p>“Alright, Stevie, I’ll put it on the shopping list. No need to jump down my throat.” His delivery is just a shade away from being unignorably suggestive, and Steve grinds his teeth and grits out, “<em>Bucky.</em>”</p>
<p>Still giggling, Bucky steps outside and shuts the door and Steve thunks his painfully overheated head against the tile. <em>Maybe Nat was onto something</em>,he thinks, for the first time since their conversation. But it makes his heart feel like a burst balloon just to contemplate, so he turns the temperature down as cold as it will go and wonders how he’s possibly going to be able to meet Bucky’s eye when he finally goes back downstairs.</p><hr/>
<p>One night at the end of the month, Steve comes back from one of Pepper’s charity events near midnight, tired but jittery from having to wear the Captain America persona for so long in public. Bucky’s waiting for him in the hallway when he gets in, and he takes Steve by the elbow to lead him up the stairs, half-guiding, half-pushing Steve into his bedroom. “You want me to make you a cup of tea or something?” he asks, learning up against the doorframe all chipper and fresh like a green sapling while Steve sits heavily on his bed and starts to unlace his uncomfortable dress shoes.</p>
<p>“Nah, I’m okay,” Steve says. “I think I just want to go to bed.” He kicks the shoes off over toward the closet and shrugs off his suit jacket, throwing it over the footboard of the bed. Bucky mutters something under his breath and comes into the bedroom to pick up the suit jacket, smoothing it over his arm, and then walks into Steve’s closet to hang it up where it belongs.</p>
<p>Steve yanks his tie off and unbuttons his shirt, pulling it off and throwing both on the floor on top of the shoes. “Don’t touch those, they can stay there and suffer,” he says, and Bucky just rolls his eyes.</p>
<p>He stands up, scuffing his bare feet on the rug beside the bed and stretching so that his back cracks like melting sea ice. “Aren’t you going to bed, too?” he asks Bucky, who has moved back over to the doorway and is standing with his shoulders hunched and his fists shoved down into the pockets of his low-slung basketball shorts.</p>
<p>“Um,” says Bucky, shifting his weight back and forth so that the floorboard beneath him creaks. “Debriefing?”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah,” Steve says, “of course,” at the same time that Bucky says, “If you don’t want to, it’s okay,” looking down at his feet in their mismatched socks; one is Steve’s—dark, solid blue—and the other is Bucky’s—green with pineapples on it.</p>
<p>He seems hesitant, which is uncharacteristic, as of late. Some small, shy part of him is peeping out at Steve, and Steve feels a sudden burst of tenderness that cleaves him down to his very core. He’s over at the door in two strides, pulling Bucky upright and wrapping his arms around his shoulders, half-hug, half-headlock. “Shut up. Of course I want to.”</p>
<p>“Hmm,” Bucky hums, and it’s both a soft laugh and an audible eyeroll. They talk about the charity event, about the jasmine, now that Bucky’s moved it outside, about what he had for dinner and what they need to get at the grocery store tomorrow.</p>
<p>Steve is still a little jittery, feeling overcaffeinated, overexposed, overtired, and Bucky is very insistently rubbing soothing circles between his shoulder blades. They’ve been silent for a minute when Steve remembers the thing that’s tucked in his back pocket and says, “Oh hey, I got you something.”</p>
<p>Bucky grins. “Ooh Stevie, you shouldn’t have. Is it my birthday? It could be, I have amnesia, I really have no idea.”</p>
<p>“You’ve made that joke like five times already.”</p>
<p>“I know, that’s why it’s funny,” Bucky says, openly laughing at him now.</p>
<p>“Shut up, jerk,” Steve says, “I’m just trying to lead up to something without it being awkward.”</p>
<p>“God almighty,” Bucky snorts. “You’ve only got two settings, awkward and pugnacious. If you’re trying not to be awkward, it makes me think you’re about to start swinging your fists.”</p>
<p>Steve growls theatrically and takes one of his hands off of Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky swerves his hips to the side like he thinks he’s about to get pinched, but Steve reaches behind him and pulls out a debit card out of his pocket.</p>
<p>“This is for you. It’s got my name on it, on account of you’re still legally dead and I can’t put you on my bank account until SHIELD gets your goddamn death certificate rescinded, but I wanted you to be able to get money out of the ATM or pay for whatever anytime you need it and not have to rely on me leaving you cash.”</p>
<p>Bucky takes the card between two of his metal fingers. He grins wickedly and says, fluttering his eyelashes, “Oh Steven, this is proof that you really <em>are </em>my sugar daddy.”</p>
<p>Steve groans. “Fucks sake, don’t start that again.” He makes a swipe for the card, but Bucky tucks his hand behind his back.</p>
<p>“No take backs!” he crows. “Now that you’re committed to keeping me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed, I’m gonna have to go shopping for feather boas and negligees and slippers with pink pom-poms. You know, for swanning around the house.” He spreads his arms out like he’s a ballerina in Swan Lake and does a pirouette before crowding back into Steve’s space and fluttering his eyelashes preposterously.</p>
<p>Steve grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. “Jesus, Bucky, you should’ve been an actor. For a straight guy, you do camp pretty well.”</p>
<p>He opens his eyes again a second later because Bucky pushes away from him. He doesn’t go far, just half a step back, but he’s standing in the middle of the hallway looking down at his mismatched socks again, all of the glee gone like it had never been there to begin with. The overhead light is off, and he’s half lit by the bedside lamp in Steve’s room, his face a collection of soft planes and shadows. It’s hard to read him in such low light, and Steve, all of a sudden, feels apprehensive and very, very tired.</p>
<p>“Steve, I gotta tell you something,” Bucky says, and his tone is back to being so hesitant and nervous that Steve immediately jumps to conclusions. They’re vague conclusions, undefinable, really, but bad conclusions, all the same. His pulse picks up and he feels a little shot of adrenaline course through his system.</p>
<p>“What’s the matter? Did something happen? Do I gotta kill somebody?” He widens his stance unconsciously, planting his feet in his slippery dress socks on the hardwood floor like he’s going to have to defend Bucky’s honor in the next thirty seconds.</p>
<p>Bucky’s eyes dart back up and he furrows his brow incredulously, his lip curled a little in derision. “Jesus, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just…”</p>
<p>Steve waits for a moment while Bucky chews on his bottom lip and turns the card over and over between his metal fingers. It makes a soft <em>click click click </em>like a mechanical pencil.</p>
<p>“You can tell me anything, you know,” Steve says finally, after another minute’s silence. “I won’t be mad.”</p>
<p>“It’s nothing to be mad about,” Bucky says, “It’s just hard to say out loud.”</p>
<p>“You want to talk about it tomorrow, instead?” Steve asks. Bucky’s deliberately put some space between them, so even though Steve longs to reach out for him, he keeps his hands hanging loosely at his sides.</p>
<p>“No, no.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m gay.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Steve says automatically, while something in his brain starts screaming. It’s a tiny little voice, like a chipmunk’s, in a register too high for human ears to ear, but he knows what it’s saying: <em>SHE WAS RIGHT!!!</em></p>
<p>He’s not really paying attention to what his own face is doing, so preoccupied is he with that statement—<em>I’m gay—</em>that’s bouncing around the the perpetually empty space between his ears and threatening to burst into flames like the <em>Hindenburg</em>. But all of a sudden, he snaps back to attention because he sees Bucky’s own face doing something horrible. There’s a half-broken vulnerability and hurt in it that reaches inside of Steve and pulls him forward by the spine; he grabs Bucky in a crushing hug again and pounds on his back a few times in some weird automatic male-bonding reflex.</p>
<p>“Sorry, sorry, jesus, I’m so sorry for zoning out.” The words come tumbling out all by themselves. “I was just startled, and I was thinking that Nat told me weeks ago that you weren’t straight and I didn’t believe her, but that’s great! Thanks for telling me, really, I didn’t mean to go all weird on you, it’s just that you really surprised me pal, that’s all. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Bucky heaves a sigh into his neck with a wet little laugh at the end of it, but Steve doesn’t pull back to look at him. “I mean,” Bucky says, “I think I handled it a little better when Captain fucking America told me he was bi.”</p>
<p>“I mean… I’m sorry. I just….” The <em>Hindenburg </em>has been replaced with a washing machine on a spin cycle, and the little chipmunk voice is now screaming, <em>BUT THEN…??? </em>Steve has to bite viciously at the inside of his own cheek before he can continue. “Like, obviously I don’t have a problem with you being gay. How could I possibly have a problem with it? Do you think I have a problem with it?”</p>
<p>“I can’t imagine that you do, but you looked like someone had just smacked you with a wet halibut, so you tell me.”</p>
<p>“It’s just… we’ve known each other for almost a hundred years and you never told me?”</p>
<p>Bucky snorts and pushes Steve away again, and if he looks a little irritated, Steve will take that over the broken vulnerability any day of the week, even if Bucky’s eyes are still a little wild. “Okay, well you’ve got me beat by a mere three months, so don’t start with the hysterics about me keeping secrets.”</p>
<p>“Okay, okay, you’re right, sorry.” Steve runs his hands through his hair half a dozen times and then scrubs them up and down over his face until he probably looks like he’s come out the wrong end of a tornado with a mild sunburn. “But, before the war, you were really, really into women. You went out with a lot of women. Like, <em>a lot</em> a lot.”</p>
<p>Bucky rolls his eyes. “Okay, Steve, you know that in the 1930s it was illegal to even think about another man’s dick. You remember the 30s better than I do.” He fixes Steve with a glare. “I know that you know what happened to guys who didn’t look like they were aggressively into girls.” Steve grimaces; he knows because that was him, too pale, too skinny, more pretty than handsome, never had a date, a fairy, a fruit.</p>
<p>“I don’t know why I did any of the things I did back then,” Bucky continues. “I don’t know why I went out with women, I don’t know why I never told you. I don’t remember any of that stuff. But I know me now, and I know I’m gay, and that’s that.” He folds his arms over his chest with a defiant finality and tilts his chin up, looking Steve in the eye with such ferocity that Steve feels like he’s five-foot-six again.</p>
<p>“Jesus, okay, no need to flay me alive.” Steve smiles his biggest, brightest, warmest smile, and it’s a doozy, he knows. “I’m really glad you told me. I’m really proud of you for telling me. It’s difficult to come out.” He raises his arms, just a little bit, asking if Bucky wants one last hug but without any pressure about it.</p>
<p>Bucky looks mollified; in fact, he looks relieved, even happy. He steps forward quickly and gives Steve one last squeeze around the middle before retreating across the hall to his own bedroom doorway. “Okay, good debrief,” he says with an awkward thumbs up.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Steve calls out before Bucky can close his door. “Thanks for trusting me.”</p>
<p>Bucky turns half around and looks at Steve over his shoulder, his eyes soft and liquid in the low midnight light. He’s ethereal, like a curl of dark smoke, and Steve feels dazzled in a way that punches the breath right out of his lungs.</p>
<p>“How could I not?” Bucky says before he closes the door. “It’s you.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Steve at the farmer's market is literally me when I see the year's first nectarine</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. July</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter has a soundtrack, if you want extra credit:</p><p>  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoR-zKXl-BA">The Zombies - The Way I Feel Inside</a></p><p>  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiY5auB3OWg">Elvis Presley - Blue Moon</a></p><p>  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_OK_H8F2g0">Blur - Tender</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve completely forgets his birthday. In his defense, a humanitarian mission to an earthquake-devastated region in central Asia had kept him out of the country the last few days of June, and when the team got back on July 1st, there were so many repetitive debriefings and mind-numbing press conferences scheduled that he’d had to stay in Manhattan overnight, no matter how desperate he was to get home.</p><p>When he finally arrives right after breakfast on the 2nd, he walks into the house and yells “HONEY, I’M HOOOOOOME!” and Bucky comes tearing out of his bedroom, takes the whole staircase in two leaps, and throws himself at Steve, who staggers back into the doorframe like he’s been hit by a pyroclastic flow.</p><p>“Jesus wept, Bucky, give a guy a little space,” he says, but returns his crushing hug. “Miss me that much?”</p><p>Bucky scoffs and pushes away, smacking Steve’s arm. “Didn’t miss you at all, jerk, I was just afraid that you were gonna get home too late and ruin all my plans.”</p><p>Steve has to resist the urge to tackle him to the floor and rub himself all over Bucky like a territorial jaguar. Instead, he picks up his bags, walks into the kitchen, and starts stuffing all of his dirty clothes into the washing machine. “Plans? What plans?” he asks suspiciously.</p><p>Bucky hops up to sit on the counter and widens his eyes innocently. “Oh, nothing much. Hey, is your driver’s license is up to date, right? Or do you have a passport?”</p><p>Steve freezes, the cap to the laundry detergent half-unscrewed. “Passport?”</p><p>“I mean, does Steve Rogers have a passport? Rather than, you know, some weird carte blanche from the UN that lets Captain America leave the country. But you only need it if your license isn’t up to date.” He waves his hands as if the words were a cloud of gnats he’s clearing out of the air. “Do you have ID is what I’m asking.”</p><p>“Uh, yeah, I have a passport and my driver’s license is up to date. Do <em>you</em> have ID?” he asks pointedly. “You’re still legally dead, you know.”</p><p>Bucky waves his hand dismissively. “Yeah yeah, it’s fine, Hill and Natasha have me covered with SHIELD. It’s only James Barnes who’s legally dead.”</p><p>Steve feels like he’s having a conversation with a neural network. He’s so tired. “Whaaaa?” he asks intelligently.</p><p>Bucky waves his hand again. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, we’ve got a flight to catch at three, so you might want to go ahead and put the soap in the machine ‘cause if there’s anything in there you wanna take, you’ll need to have it washed and dried in a couple of hours.”</p><p>Steve looks at the detergent in his hand, then looks at Bucky, then frowns. “Buck, can you tell me what’s going on? I just got back from an extremely tiring mission and had to go through a hundred rounds of even more tiring debriefings and then talk to fucking reporters, and now you’re telling me I gotta get on a plane again and go god knows where for god knows what?”</p><p>Bucky drops his insouciant façade and grimaces a little. “Yeah, I know. It’s been a really hard week for you, and it was really bad timing. But I’ve had this thing planned for a month now, and I was really hoping that it would work out. I know you’re gonna like it.”</p><p>“Like what?”</p><p>“It’s… it’s a surprise.”</p><p>Steve’s frown deepens, and Bucky leans over and puts a hand on his arm, bringing his face in close to Steve’s. His eyes are luminous in the bright morning light of the kitchen, his lips two pink rose petals, <em>Close enough to kiss, if only he would lean down and just…</em> “Steve, do you trust me?” he says.</p><p>Steve shivers all over involuntarily and looks away, down at his bare feet on the cool stone floor of the kitchen. Absently, he notes how clean it is, the grey slate freshly mopped; Bucky had taken care of things while he was away. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”</p><p>“Then let me do this for you. You won’t need to think about anything. Everything is taken care of.” Bucky looks up past Steve’s shoulder at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Why don’t you go lie down and take a nap. I’ll wake you in up time for lunch. We need to leave by one o’clock, so you need to be rested and showered and fed by then.”</p><p>Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, feeling the sudden wave of desire give way to the exhaustion that sweeps over him. He wants nothing more than to curl up in bed and sleep for forty-eight hours, but this looks like something that’s really important to Bucky, so he can do it. “Okay,” he says.</p><p>Bucky hops off the counter and nudges Steve toward the doorway. “Actually, you know what, go take a nap in my room. That way I can get in your closet and pack your bag.”</p><p>Steve is too tired to feel anything at the prospect of sleeping in Bucky’s bed. He just goes into the bedroom and shuts the door, lies down, and is immediately plunged into a deep and dreamless sleep.</p><p>He wakes up two hours later feeling exceedingly refreshed, but also extremely confused about why the light in the room looks weird and why he can smell Bucky <em>everywhere</em>. In spite of his disorientation, or maybe, in part, because of it, his body responds immediately, a heavy heat blooming in his tender inner thighs and pressing down from his gut to his groin. He rolls over and sees his doodles taped to the bedside table and realizes where he is with a start. A moment of panic, and then he remembers everything. He’s sitting up on the bed rubbing his eyes with his knuckles when Bucky opens the door softly.</p><p>“Oh good, you’re awake. I was just coming to get you. Bag’s packed, lunch is ready downstairs. You wanna shower first?”</p><p>“Uh. Yeah.” Steve is reeling a little bit from the jet lag and the post-nap feeling of having been yanked bodily into an alternate universe. He stands up, sliding one hand into his pocket to adjust himself as subtly as a brick through a window, and walks over to the door, rolling his shoulders. “Where are we going?”</p><p>Bucky wags his finger admonishingly as he steps out of Steve’s way. “Uh-uh, I’m not gonna spoil the surprise. Just trust me.”</p><p>“I do trust you,” Steve says, squeezing Bucky’s human shoulder as he slips past. “I’m just extremely jet lagged and I need to know what to wear, and anyway, hey, if we’re going through airport security what are you gonna do about your arm and…”</p><p>“Steve.” Bucky grabs him by the biceps. “First, we’re staying in the same time zone. No more jet lag. Wear shorts and a t-shirt and your sneakers. Second, we’re going on Tony’s private jet, so security’s gonna be minimal. The airport already knows all about the kinds of people Tony travels with.” Steve opens his mouth to say something—<em>What’s Tony got to do with this?</em>—but Bucky cuts him off. “Third, chill. Let go. We are going on a real vacation and you are gonna relax if I have to put you in a headlock and cut off your air supply.”</p><p>“A real vacation?” Steve says, wonderingly. “Never been on one of those before. Sounds exciting.” Bucky gives him the fondly exasperated look, and Steve laughs, “Okay, jeez. I get the message. I’m gonna relax if it kills me.”</p>
<hr/><p>Steve falls asleep again as soon as they take off, so he doesn’t figure out where they are until an airport official meets them at the bottom of the plane’s fold-down steps with a cheery, “Welcome to Key West!” Bucky grins at Steve like the cat who got the cream, and then makes Steve wait outside a little booth at the airport while he rents a car with a driver’s license Steve’s never seen before. Soon, they’re on their way to a sleepy little beach half an hour outside of Key West.</p><p>They pass palm trees and more palm trees and long bridges that carry them over expanses of silver-blue water dotted with little green islands that barely rise above the swell. Fat golden clouds like piles of tea roses sail overhead at intervals, and Steve leans his head against the passenger-side door and just lets the scenery pass by, listening to the happy little hum of his heart.</p><p>Finally, they turn off the main road, and then turn off again, down a long, sandy driveway. They pull up in front of a bright blue bungalow, behind which Steve can see a white sand beach and the ocean, turning a dark, brassy blue in the light of the sun setting to the west. He opens the car door and just starts walking as Bucky gets their duffel out of the trunk, ignoring the house completely, passing flowering bushes and some high-canopied trees before arriving at the beach. He walks past the high-tide line and throws himself down on his back in the warm, white sand and just lets himself breathe for the first time in weeks. Months, maybe.</p><p>For the first time in years.</p><p>They stay for five days, and Steve has what may be the best five days of his life. The morning after they arrive, when he gets up, he feels vaguely worried that maybe he doesn’t actually know how to relax, like he’s probably missing some really important relaxation gene, but Bucky greets him with an egg-and-sausage sandwich and a book and tells him to get his ass out to the porch, and that’s the last time he thinks about it. He does nothing but relax, moving between a towel on the sand, a deck chair on the back porch, and the well-used, lumpy-but-comfortable couch in the bungalow’s tiny living room. They swim, they nap, they build a sandcastle, they wait for the stars to come out over the ocean in the evening, and watch terrible movies on DVD at night.</p><p>Bucky has a sleeve that makes his arm look like a normal plastic prosthesis so that he can take his shirt off and get in the ocean without anyone getting curious about his high-tech metal arm. Tony had found it—or maybe had made it, Bucky was unclear on the details—and had sent it over by courier while Steve was sleeping the morning that they left. He has to roll it on like a condom and the material squeaks like a new leather shoe as it’s being stretched over the arm, and they’re both weak with laughter by the time he gets it up over his shoulder joint.</p><p>It’s an almost-perfect match for his skin tone, and when they get out on the beach and strip down to their swim trunks, Bucky twirls around on the bright white sand and says, “Look at me Stevie, two arms, I’m a real boy!”</p><p>Steve can feel his smile falter a little, and though he tries to pick it right back up, Bucky notices. “I’m just joking,” he says. “Don’t make that face.”</p><p>“I’m not making any face.”</p><p>“Yes you are. You’re making that face where you’re thinking sad thoughts about me.”</p><p>Steve turns his back to Bucky and the cut-glass ocean and spreads his towel out over the hot sand, trying to collect himself a little. It’s just a joke, so why does it feel like a knife between the ribs? Bucky can joke about himself, that’s fine. It’s not up to Steve to get sad about it.</p><p>He’s smoothing out the wrinkles on the towel with the bottom of his foot when Bucky comes up behind him and squeezes his shoulder with the metal hand. The sleeve feels weird, it has the rubbery drag of a stretched-out balloon, but the coolness of the metal underneath radiates through, soothing some small, wounded thing in Steve like a wet cloth on a fevered brow. He starts to tilt his head down to squeeze Bucky’s hand between his shoulder and his cheek, but catches himself and turns it into a shake.</p><p>“It’s fine, sorry about the face,” he says, turning around.</p><p>“It <em>is</em> a pretty terrible face,” Bucky says with a rude grin, and then runs straight into the surf and faceplants into a wave.</p><p>The next morning, Steve wakes up later than usual, and as soon as he walks out into the little hallway that separates his room from Bucky’s, he can tell that he’s alone in the house. In the kitchen there’s a note on the table in Bucky’s careful handwriting that says “Went into the town for supplies, back soon. Don’t eat breakfast yet.” Steve shrugs, bemused, but makes himself a cup of coffee, thinking that surely Bucky wouldn’t make him wait for <em>that</em>.</p><p>Half an hour later he’s sitting on the back porch with a second cup of coffee and his sketchbook when he hears the front door open and Bucky walk into the kitchen. “I’m back!” he calls, and Steve answers, “I’m on the porch!” A few minutes later Bucky comes through the back door with two forks and two plates, on which are two huge slices of chocolate cake with half an inch of chocolate icing all around.</p><p>“Cake for breakfast? Really?” Steve asks dubiously. “Is that what normal people do on vacation?”</p><p>Bucky grins, wide and delighted, and hands Steve one of the plates. “It’s a special occasion,” he says, sitting down in the other deck chair and leaning over to clink Steve’s mug with his own.</p><p>“Oh yeah? What’s so special about it?” Steve says around his first mouthful of cake.</p><p>Bucky looks at him, momentarily startled, and then snorts. “Okay, I thought <em>I</em> was the amnesiac here. But you’re jetlagged, I guess I can forgive it.” Then he puts down his plate, places his right hand over his heart and belts out, “OOOOHHHHH SAY CAN YOU SEEEEEEE, BY THE DAWN’S EARLEEEE LIIIIIIIIIIGHT…”</p><p>“Oh my god, is it my birthday?” Steve interrupts, incredulous. Then he does some mental arithmetic. “It <em>is</em> my birthday!”</p><p>“Damn straight, ninety-seven years old and you don’t look a day over twenty-five.”</p><p>“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Steve mutters, but he knows his cheeks have pinked up under his sunburn and his three-day beard.</p><p>“Before I forget, the ride in the private jet was your birthday present from Tony and Pepper and everybody else pitched in to rent this house for us. Except for Hill, but she was the one who did all the research and found it, so that was her contribution.”</p><p>Steve shoves another forkful of cake in his mouth, trying to give himself a second to think. “Christ, Bucky, when did you plan all this?”</p><p>“You remember last month when you quit the group chat because Tony was ribbing you about my old tac gear?”</p><p>“Uhh,” Steve says, feeling his stomach flip-flop in spite of himself.</p><p>“And then I told you that Nat wouldn’t add you back for a few days to teach you a lesson?”</p><p>Steve’s mouth is full of cake, so he just nods.</p><p>“Well, actually, she wouldn’t add you back because I took advantage of your absence to ask what they thought about me planning this trip, and everybody decided to pitch in. And here we are.” He spreads his arms and gestures to the house and the ocean, the white sand and the trees rustling in the constant breeze. “So anyway, today you’re getting dessert for breakfast and then we’re gonna go snorkeling, and then in the afternoon we’re gonna lie on the beach and toast ourselves like Pop-Tarts, and then I bought burgers, and there’s the rest of the cake. And the only big fireworks show should be in Key West, which is fifteen miles away. But just in case, I brought your earplugs and the noise-cancelling headphones. Ta-da!” He gives Steve his best jazz hands. “Sound good?”</p><p>To his horror, Steve feels his eyes start to prickle. He swallows around the hard lump that has suddenly appeared in his throat and turns his head away to hide his wet eyes. “Sounds like the best birthday I’ve ever had in my life,” he says gruffly, and stuffs another huge forkful of chocolate cake into his mouth.</p><p>Bucky reaches over with his human hand and gives Steve’s fingers a squeeze. Then he stuffs a napkin into Steve’s hand and says, softly, “I’m gonna make some more coffee. Wait here, I’ll bring you out a fresh cup in a minute.” He sets his plate down on the railing and walks back into the house, allowing Steve a merciful few minutes of privacy to wipe his eyes. <em>How does he always know what I need?</em> Steve thinks, and blows his nose in the napkin.</p><p>He feels so full of emotion, an ocean’s worth of emotion just waiting to break the meniscus of self-control and spill out of him word after word until he is dry and empty again. <em>I love him so much I think it’s gonna kill me</em>, he thinks. And then, the old, familiar voice that sounds like himself at his smallest and most aggrieved, lashing out at everything around him: <em>You fucking coward</em>.</p><p>But it doesn’t hurt like it’s supposed to; it’s not that he’s a coward, it’s just that he’s waiting. In the last few days, it feels like something has changed, like the wind has backed around and is now blowing from the opposite direction. Yeats runs through his mind, unbidden: <em>things fall apart; the centre cannot hold</em>, but there’s no rough beast here, just a love too big to bear, an inevitability, a fate he’s unwilling to escape. He thinks, fatalistically, that it’s a meteorite on a collision course with his life, and all he has to do is wait for it to obliterate him. Bucky is going to find out, one way or another, and either he says yes, or he doesn’t. Whatever comes after is a problem for another Steve.</p>
<hr/><p>He almost says it, the day before they leave. They’re lying out on the beach in the late-afternoon sun, warm and sleepy and a little sweaty from sitting in the sun all day. Steve is stretched out on his back with one arm crooked over his eyes, and he watches from under the corner of his elbow as Bucky grasps his t-shirt by the back of the neck and pulls it over his head in one swift movement.</p><p>Steve has to bite down on his bottom lip to keep the whimper out of his traitorous mouth. Bucky’s back is broad and golden-brown; it was already tanned by the summer sun in New York, but now that they’ve spent four days on the beach, the skin tone of the sleeve on his metal arm no longer matches the rest of his torso. It’s only noticeable up close, though, as close as Steve is now. Bucky’s wearing a pair of short fluorescent-blue swim trunks with white piping up the sides. They ride up his thighs, now, as he settles himself back on his elbows and tips his face up toward the sky, eyes closed, hair hanging in waves between the two muscled wings of his shoulder blades. It’s been bleached a little by the summer sun, the dark and glossy sable shot through with threads of twisting, curling copper.</p><p>Steve breaks out in a fresh sweat as he feels the kindling heat in his belly that has plagued him for weeks. He sits up and pulls his knees up to his chest, circling them with his arms and crossing his feet at the ankles.</p><p>He’s trying to look out to sea, trying to watch the piping, trilling seabirds run up and down the narrow beach, trying to concentrate on the crash and hiss of the waves, but his eyes are drawn, inexorably, back down to Bucky’s golden chest under the late-afternoon sun. There are beads of sweat around his collarbone, and in the soft cradle between his pecs lie his dog tags, the dull silver color of an antique ring.</p><p>Steve watches in intermingled desire and horror as his hand moves of its own accord, his fingers reaching out to brush over the metal, hot as a live coal from the sun or from Bucky’s skin; he’s not sure which. He snatches his fingers back, his heart pounding in his ears, and Bucky cracks an eye and grins up at him. “You never told me how you got those back,” Bucky says, and Steve looks out to sea again, clearing his throat twice before he can speak.</p><p>“It was Dugan’s granddaughter that gave them to me.”</p><p>Bucky sits up and brushes the sand off his elbows, drawing his own knees up with his arms around them, mimicking Steve. “How’d she get them?”</p><p>“Well, the story I got was, after the war was over, the rest of the Commandos stayed in Europe and did some work for Peggy, mopping up after Hydra, that sort of thing. But Dugan and Gabe took a leave of absence and went to Austria, back to the ravine where… where you fell. They were looking for your body. They wanted to bring you home.”</p><p>It still really hurts him to talk about this, even if that body is sitting next to him right now, two hundred pounds of verve and wit and tender kindness. There’s quick, red blood thrumming through his veins, the thumping great beat of his big, strong heart lost in the sound of the waves, but audible to Steve anyway, like the subsonic <em>whump</em> of a faraway firework. He looks away from Bucky, down the beach to where a man is throwing a stick for a big, dark dog. It looks like a Lab, a chunky, happy thing that lollops around and splashes through the rills where the water is trickling back out to sea. Bucky shifts closer on his own towel until Steve can feel the heat radiating off of him, all down his left side. Then he leans over until he can poke Steve in the knee. “And then what?”</p><p>“They didn’t find you, of course. But somehow, I don’t know how, Dugan’s granddaughter wasn’t really clear on the specifics, they turned over the right rock and found your dog tags underneath. The chain was broken, either it got broken when you fell…”</p><p>“Or the guys who picked me up pulled it off so that I couldn’t be identified.”</p><p>“Yeah.” A vee of pelicans appears on the left, flying parallel to the beach toward Key West, big, silent, clay-colored birds carrying their coin-purse pouches. Both Steve and Bucky turn their heads, watching them until they disappear behind the trees that run down to the ocean at the end of the strand.</p><p>“So then how did they get to you?”</p><p>“Well, Dugan brought the tags back with him, I guess, and passed them to his daughter, who passed them to her daughter. And when I came out of the ice and made the news, she wrapped them up in a little box with a very sweet note and mailed them to me.”</p><p>“And you wore them?”</p><p>“I didn’t take them off for three years. Not until you came back. When I saw you that first time, when your mask fell off and I realized it was you, then I took them off and set them aside, because I knew that I was going to give them back to you one day.”</p><p>Bucky rubs Steve’s bony knee with the fingers of the hand still grasping his own knee. “Thanks again, Steve. It means the world to me.”</p><p><em>I love you,</em> his brain screams, the words ringing between his ears like the echo of a gunshot in a canyon. <em>I love you, </em>his body wails, <em>I love you, </em>his heart howls, <em>I love you, I love you, I love you</em>. He almost says it, he opens his mouth, he can feel his throat tighten and the words are <em>right there</em>, but then Bucky glances back and catches sight of his shoulder and says, “Goddammit, did you forget to put sunscreen on again?”</p><p>“I don’t need sunscreen,” Steve says, both childishly petulant and faint with relief. “The burn disappears in a couple hours anyway.”</p><p>“You look like a boiled lobster, you idiot,” Bucky says, and then pinches the meat of Steve’s shoulder so that the burn flares up, and then it’s easy to shove him over onto his side so that his hair gets all sandy. Then the moment is gone, the momentum lost like the energy that the waves expend in their long run up onto the bone-white beach.</p>
<hr/><p>Back at home, the tension builds, ratcheting up higher and higher until Steve feels like an orange being juiced by the hand of god. Each morning he wakes up loose and calm enough, lopes down the stairs and into the kitchen to make himself coffee and start in on breakfast, but when he hears the creak of the floorboards in Bucky’s room and the rattle of the doorknob opening and the soft pad of his feet coming down the stairs, his easy mood flies out the window with an audible <em>whoosh</em>. He’s a balsa wood airplane, his propeller worked by a rubber band wound tighter and tighter until enough kinetic energy is built up that it caroms wildly all over the place when let go. He doesn’t know what the breaking point is going to be, when things will fall apart, but he can see it looming on the horizon and it fills him with both dread and wild anticipation.</p><p>It’s almost—but not quite—unbearable. Steve feels like he’s about to jump out of his skin every time Bucky walks into the room. When Bucky walks by, brushing a hand over his shoulder on his way to open the back door and let in the cool morning breeze, Steve can feel all of his organs thrumming along the ley line that runs between them. In the evening, when they debrief, he can only half pay attention to what Bucky is saying, consumed with the effort of keeping his body from vibrating straight through the floor and down into the core of the Earth.</p><p>Bucky’s the only thing he thinks about, the bourdon of his name a constant hum he can’t get used to. Every morning when he opens his eyes there’s a murmur in the back of his mind, <em>Bucky Bucky Bucky,</em> that rises through the day into a swelling crescendo of want.</p><p>A week after they get back from the Keys, they’re in the kitchen after dinner. Bucky is cleaning up, washing the dishes and the big wooden salad bowl and the cutting board, while Steve is standing at the counter by the stove with a stack of cookbooks, paging through and making a list on a piece of scrap paper of ingredients that they need to pick up at the grocery store: scamorza for a frittata, bulgur for tabbouleh, port because Bucky used the last of their bottle making cherry sauce for ice cream.</p><p>Bucky is listening to music over the fancy Bluetooth speakers that Steve had bought him, singing along quietly in his low, lovely voice as he washes the dishes and slots them into the rack to dry. Steve isn’t paying much attention, not until the song switches from something jaunty to something spare, no instruments, just a man’s voice.</p><p><em>Should I try to hide</em> <em><br/>
</em>
  <em>the way I feel inside<br/>
</em>
<em>my heart, for you?</em> <em><br/>
</em></p><p>Steve’s hand stills over the grocery list; he can feel the way the pencil bends dangerously in his grip as his fingers spasm. Bucky sings as he swirls a bouquet of forks and spoons around under the stream of water from the tap and drops them, clinking, into the silverware holder.</p><p>
  <em>Would you say that you<br/>
</em>
  <em>would try to love me too?<br/>
</em>
  <em>In your mind<br/>
</em>
  <em>Could you ever be<br/>
</em>
  <em>Really close to me?<br/>
</em>
</p><p>It feels like someone has poured a line of liquid nitrogen down his spine, both terribly cold and burning like the red eye of a smelting furnace as it drips down his skin. He’s flying apart at the seams, he’s caroming wildly all over the place, but silently, still frozen in place.</p><p>
  <em>If I feel that I<br/>
</em>
  <em>could be certain then<br/>
</em>
<em>I would say the things </em><br/>
<em>I want to say tonight.</em><br/>
</p><p>Steve looks down at the cookbook, open to a colorful close-up of something he can’t even see. He can hear the swish of the dishcloth through the water in the sink and the gentle rasp as it’s scrubbed over the face of the wooden cutting board. Bucky’s singing voice is usually an oft-washed blanket, a hot shower, the mug he wraps his frozen fingers around, the smell of baking bread. But right now, it’s both the knife and the salve, the stinging slap and the soft kiss; it hurts and soothes in equal measures.</p><p>
  <em>But 'til I can see<br/>
</em>
  <em>That you'd really care for me<br/>
</em>
  <em>I will dream<br/>
</em>
  <em>that someday you’ll be<br/>
</em>
  <em>really close to me<br/>
</em>


</p><p>He doesn’t believe in god, he doesn’t believe in augurs or signs, but it feels like the universe has grabbed him by the nape of his neck and has dragged him to the mirror, forcing him to look himself in the eye. Bucky pulls up the stopper in the bottom of the sink and Steve can see him, out of the corner of his eye, yank the dishtowel off his shoulder and dry his hands on it as the water whirls down the drain in a soft swish, and the song comes to an end.</p><p>
  <em>But 'til I can see<br/>
</em>
<em>That you'd really care for me<br/>
</em>
<em>I’ll keep trying to hide<br/>
</em>
<em>the way I feel inside.</em><br/>
</p><p>Another song starts up after a silent moment that stretches into infinity; he vaguely recognizes the plinking guitar before Elvis starts crooning, <em>Blue moon, you saw me standing alone…</em> Head empty of anything but a sort of whistling silence, he says, “Buck…”</p><p>Bucky whirls around, immediately worried by whatever it is that he hears in Steve’s voice. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>Steve swallows heavily. “What song was that?”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t look mollified, but he slowly folds the dishtowel in half and slips it through the handle of the oven door while he says, “Um, I don’t remember the name. It’s from the 60s.” He’s staring at Steve, and as Steve watches, the concern on his face is tempered with something else, something knowing, something wise, a kind of recognition that’s so excruciating that Steve drops the poor, long-suffering pencil on top of the forgotten grocery list and brushes past Bucky to go stand at the back door, looking out over the garden.</p><p>Even though the setting sun is still sparkling off the windows of the buildings that abut the back fence, their garden is cast into twilight by the long shadow of their own house. As Steve watches, a moth alights on the red valerian planted around the base of the deck; he can see it through the slats of the railing, its soft brown body almost invisible against the dark red blossom clusters in the twilight. It’s only there for a moment, and then it disappears; he doesn’t see where it flies off to, but suddenly, it’s gone.</p><p>Then there’s a hand at his elbow, Bucky’s strong fingers squeezing the hard bones of the joint just enough to bring him back into the kitchen, back into his head. “Steve,” he murmurs quietly, “is there something you want to tell me?”</p><p>Bucky lets go of his elbow as Steve turns around, but he doesn’t move away. There isn’t much space between them; Steve would hardly have to reach out at all to pull Bucky right into his arms. His face is solemn and open, but there’s a hint of amusement in the glitter of his eyes.</p><p>All of a sudden, Steve is hit by the certainty that he knows. <em>He knows. He knows everything.</em> It’s a paradigm shift like a seven-point-oh earthquake, he feels his foundations tremble, it makes his heart skip in his chest, and all of the awkward fear is suddenly gone like so much mist in the summer sun. What is stopping Steve, then, from throwing himself headlong into the welcoming arms of the warm and sparkling sea?</p><p>“Yeah, I love you,” he says eagerly, all in a rush. And then, “I’m <em>in love</em> with you,” desperate not to be misunderstood.</p><p>Bucky’s eyes are so wide and blue in the secondhand light that’s being reflected through the window and into the kitchen that Steve feels like he’s been dropped into the middle of the Pacific with no land in sight. He can’t catch a breath and his heart is beating so fast that it might actually take flight and burst from his chest at any minute.</p><p>Bucky’s looking at him, and he still hasn’t said anything, but it’s written all there in the lines of his expressive face, the way his lips are parted around the soft tip of his pink tongue, his dark, straight brows pulled up over the bridge of his nose like the peak of the roof under which Steve stands, warm and dry, with his frantic heart clutched in his hand like an offering.</p><p>Steve has to find something solid to lean against as soon as possible or he’s going to faint. “Debrief?” he says breathlessly.</p><p>“Debrief,” Bucky agrees, and they both step forward at once, colliding, Steve’s arms around the soft cage of Bucky’s ribs and Bucky’s arms tight around Steve’s neck. Steve buries his nose in the hair behind Bucky’s ear, something he’d never allowed himself to do before. He smells like his orange blossom shampoo and marigold leaves, spicy and green. Bucky sticks his own nose into the crook of Steve’s neck like usual and breathes deeply. They stand like that in the doorway, the kitchen darkening around them, rocking back and forth a little while the playlist cycles through a few more songs.</p><p>Steve’s not paying attention to the music, but all of a sudden one line stands out and catches his ear like a pliant fishhook.</p><p><em>Tender is the ghost<br/>
</em>
<em>The ghost I love the most<br/>
</em>
<em>Hiding from the sun<br/>
</em>
<em>Waiting for the night to come<br/>
</em>
</p><p>“That’s you,” Steve whispers. “The ghost I love the most.”</p><p>Bucky makes a sound that could be a laugh, but it trembles suspiciously at the end. He pulls Steve even closer and rubs his damp face into the crook of Steve’s neck.</p><p>“Oh, Buck,” Steve says, pushing on his shoulders, trying to get him to move back so that he can get a look at his face. But Bucky just grabs him tighter, pulls him closer. They’re pressed chest to chest, and Steve can feel Bucky’s bare toes nudging at the arches of his own feet. The metronomic pulse of Bucky’s heart is laid over top of Steve’s own, quick but steady, out of sync but not discordant.</p><p>Steve runs one hand up to the back of Bucky’s neck and squeezes gently. He can feel the way that Bucky melts into the touch, the way his body softens against Steve’s own, and it sends a thrill bursting across his scalp and down his spine. He tilts his head an inch, setting his mouth next to the golden spiral of Bucky’s ear. Bucky still hasn’t said anything, but Steve knows. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt.</p><p>“Youlove me, too,” he murmurs in awe, and Bucky shivers in his arms.</p><p>Then he reaches up and pinches the lobe of Steve’s ear lightly between his metal fingers and whispers, “I do” into Steve’s neck. A moment later, even softer: “You fucking sap.”</p><p>The mood changes then, they are over the crest of the hill, and Steve laughs, bright and happy like a new penny. He reaches up and takes hold of Bucky’s wrists, pulling them down from around his neck and holding them flush against his chest. Bucky straightens up and looks at Steve, his eyes still huge and blue, a little red-rimmed, but dry. They gleam like gold-tinted sapphires in the last of the dying light. “What now?” Steve asks, softly.</p><p>Bucky looks down at Steve’s mouth like he hasn’t eaten in three days. “Kind of a stupid question,” he murmurs. The tip of his own pink tongue darts out and wets his bottom lip, and then he leans in, confident as you please, and presses his lips to Steve’s.</p><p>Steve closes his eyes and immediately opens his mouth on a sigh, everything inside him bubbling, boiling, melting. He’s a lump of gallium in the palm of Bucky’s warm hand; all his solid parts are turning liquid and puddling on the floor around his feet. And then—when he thinks back to it later, there’s a lacuna here, a little skip in his eidetic memory—some indeterminate length of time later, somehow, he’s got his hands on either side of Bucky’s face, fingers tangled in the loose hair behind his ears, holding him in place, kissing him desperately, his tongue in Bucky’s soft mouth. His lips are starting to feel raw and beard-burnt and Bucky has his hands up under Steve’s shirt, and somehow the feeling of both of them, the human one and the metal one running in tandem over his chest and Bucky’s hot tongue pressing at his the corner of his mouth makes something snap inside of him and he feels a little shot of adrenaline course through his system, a little panic and something bordering on pain.</p><p>He pulls away, cupping Bucky’s sandpapery jaw, kissing him again and then again before leaning back against the door so that he can see his face. Steve’s chest is heaving, and he knows that he must look like he’s just been socked in the mouth, if Bucky’s mouth is anything to go by. The kitchen is nearly dark, only the dim light over the stove on, the light outside nothing but a pale periwinkle wash over the cloudless evening sky. Standing with his back to the kitchen door and the blaze of Bucky’s body plastered to his front, his face half-cloaked in darkness but his breathless panting loud in Steve’s ears, he feels like this is the most overwhelmingly erotic thing he’s ever done in his life. He’s hard, just from kissing, and he can feel that Bucky is too, his cock an undeniable presence nestled in the space between Steve’s belly and his hip. </p><p>He has to close his eyes before he can say, “I don’t know what I’m doing. We should talk about this. Is this ok? What do you…” He breaks off and swallows, he can’t even bring himself to say <em>What do you want?</em> He’s more nervous than he’s ever been in his life. His corporeal self is miles ahead of him, a firecracker of want hissing and spitting in the very bottom of his belly. His body desperately wants to fuck or get fucked, but he’s never done this before, not like <em>this</em>, and he feels like he’s fallen off the edge of the map. He’s kind of afraid. He’s terrified, actually.</p><p>Bucky moves his hands under Steve’s shirt, trailing them down his sides and around to his back. He’s trying to look serious, but a grin keeps breaking out from under the soft, thoughtful set of his mouth. “Steve. Stevie. I’m in love with you, too, you know. I feel like I’ve waited for almost a century for this, even if I didn’t know that I was waiting for most of it. What do you think I want?”</p><p>Steve says, shocked, “A century?” and, in what feels like the most inevitable turns of events of the last thirty minutes, the tears gather in his eyes faster than he can blink them away and start to roll down his cheeks.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he sniffs, “it’s just...” He trails off, pulling one elbow up over his eyes, but Bucky gently pulls it back down again and then brings both of his hands up to cup Steve’s face. The wells of his eyes are infinitely deep and dark and Steve feels like he is both standing on the precipice and has fallen in, Alice down the rabbit hole, years ago already.</p><p>“Steve,” Bucky says. “I knew that I loved you before I even knew who you were, and way before I knew who I was. I loved you from the other side of the door at SHIELD, I’ve loved you since the day you brought me home with you. I’m sure I loved you when we were kids, and I’d bet anything you want that I loved you even when you were dead in the ocean and I was only a half-alive thing, myself. When they burned everything out of my brain, I know the only thing left to me, buried somewhere deep down inside, was that I loved you.” He wipes his metal thumb across Steve’s cheekbone, soft as a piece of fine silk, smoothing away the drying tears. “Why do you think I couldn’t kill you? Why do you think I pulled you out of the water? Why do you think I came in from the cold? Why do you think I survived what I survived, seventy long years of it?” He pauses, his eyes unfocused, his lips parted on the soft hush of his breath as Steve waits for whatever could possibly come next.</p><p>But Bucky surprises him again. “I don’t think we should talk about that now, though,” he says, clearing his thoughts with a rough shake of his head. He cuts Steve’s sniffling off abruptly by moving forward, using his bodyweight to catch him off balance and crowd him against the door again, getting his teeth on Steve’s neck and parting Steve’s thighs with his leg.</p><p>Steve groans and grinds up involuntarily into the hard angle of Bucky’s hip. Every muscle in his groin tightens at the feeling, it feels good, so good, almost too good, and then all of a sudden it really is too good and Steve realizes that he’s gonna faint or have an aneurysm or freak out if they keep going. It’s not a panic attack, it’s something else, but it’s overwhelming. Maybe it is a panic attack? <em>Oh god oh god oh god.</em> He turns his face away from Bucky, and gasps out, “Wait, wait, wait!”</p><p>Bucky immediately gets out of his space and holds both of his hands up, his eyes searching Steve’s face, concerned. “What is it, Stevie, what’s the matter?”</p><p>Steve slides down the door and hits the floor with a thump; he’s breathing too fast, too light, on the verge of hyperventilation, on the verge of passing out, on the verge of coming untouched in his pants. Bucky, who always seems to know what Steve needs, kneels down and grabs Steve’s hand and then holds it to his own chest, under his heart, and starts to take deep, measured breaths. <em>In-two-three-four, out-two-three-four</em>. “Breathe with me.”</p><p>Steve feels the ribs under his fingertips expand (<em>two-three-four</em>) and contract (<em>two-three-four</em>), and the heart under his palm beats strong and steady. It only takes him a minute to get his breathing under control, the panic ebbing away as fast as it came. He sits there on the cool slate of the kitchen floor, his hand curled around Bucky’s side and the right angle of his thumb and forefinger cupping the soft curve of his chest, and thinks about that morning he woke up alone in bed, how he had wanted more than anything to call out to Bucky, to be comforted by him, to be held by him.</p><p>He ducks his head into his shoulder, embarrassed in ways he can’t put into words, and reaches out with both arms. Bucky waits for a moment, and then sits down, hooks his legs over Steve’s, and pulls Steve towards him until he’s almost in his lap.</p><p>They sit there for a while, cheek to cheek, two halves of an oyster shell with something precious and pearlescent caught snug between them. Steve has his eyes closed and his head on Bucky’s shoulder while Bucky is stroking the cool pads of his metal fingers down the back of Steve’s neck, up-down, up-down, over and over. The sky in the window behind his head is completely dark before he finally says, his voice muffled in Bucky’s hair, “I’m really sorry I ruined it. I got overwhelmed.”</p><p>Bucky brings his hand back up to Steve’s neck, squeezes gently, and says, “Don’t.”</p><p>Steve sits up a little straighter. “Don’t… don’t talk?”</p><p>Bucky’s laugh rumbles in his chest. “No, dingdong. Don’t apologize.” Down go his fingers again, down to the first knob of Steve’s spine. “You didn’t ruin anything, and we should talk about it, actually. I’m sorry I got ahead of myself.”</p><p>Steve sighs deeply. “You always were one step ahead of me in everything.” He shifts a little, drawing his knees up, scooting even closer to Bucky. “But you’re right, we should talk. Though maybe we should move to the couch, this floor is too hard,” he ends with a whine.</p><p>Bucky laughs soft and low, his breath ghosting across the side of Steve’s neck. “It’s late, maybe we should just move to the bed,” he says, and Steve can’t help himself, he stiffens against his will as that little stab of panic gets him again, right between the ribs.</p><p>Bucky sits up straight so that Steve’s head falls off his shoulder, and then takes Steve’s face between his two hands, lifting his chin so that Steve has to look him in the eye. “Sweetheart,” he says, his face full of a love that washes over Steve like the ocean’s swell. <em>How could I not have seen it?</em> he thinks.</p><p>“Sweetheart,” Bucky says again, “I don’t know what’s making you nervous, but I hope you’ll tell me. And I hope that you believe me when I say that nothing has changed. You’re still you, I’m still me.” He smooths his human thumb over Steve’s cheek and Steve closes his eyes. He’s suddenly exhausted, but he can feel contentment like a deep thrum underlying the ebbing spike of adrenaline. Bucky goes on, “I’m real tired, Steve, all I want to do right now is lie down. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’ll sleep in my own bed if you want me to. I’ll do anything you want me to.” Steve can feel his eyes fill up again, burning hot against the backs of his eyelids when he shuts them tighter them against the tears.</p><p>Bucky’s thumb keeps up its soothing rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, holding the weight of Steve’s heavy head in his hands until Steve feels like he can open his eyes again and whisper, “Okay.”</p><p>He scoots back a little to give himself room to stand up, but loses his balance and almost falls over when he pushes to his feet. Bucky’s there to catch him, though, and the soft <em>whirr-zing</em> of his metal arm as he takes Steve’s weight is a comforting and familiar purr. They both pause there, Steve with his back to the door, back in the same position as they’d found themselves half an hour ago, a lifetime ago.</p><p>“Why don’t you go upstairs and get ready for bed,” Bucky says finally, flashing him a sweet smile and then turning away, no kiss, not even a smoldering glance. “I’m going to sweep under the table and then lock up and I’ll be right there.”</p><p>Steve knows he’s trying to put him at ease, to soothe the bird beating its wings against the inside of his ribcage, and he appreciates it, as much as he hates himself for needing to be coddled in the first place. He climbs the stairs in a daze, so stuffed full of feelings that he doesn’t know how to identify, much less sort out or examine rationally. He’s a scarecrow with the feelings bursting out of his cuffs and between his buttons, feelings woven into a straw hat, a whole pole of feelings shoved up the back of his shirt.</p><p>Upstairs, Steve drops his shirt and shorts over the back of the chair in his bedroom and goes into his bathroom to brush his teeth. He hears Bucky come upstairs and turn on the tap in the hall bathroom, and Steve suddenly can’t look himself in the eye in the mirror. <em>Fucking coward</em>, the little voice whispers again.</p><p>Five minutes later he’s lying on his bed, on top of the covers with just the bedside lamp on and his arm thrown across his eyes, when there’s a soft knock on the open door. Bucky’s standing in the doorway in one of Steve’s old shirts, looking tired but content. “Debrief?” he asks softly.</p><p>All of a sudden, Steve loves him so much he feels like he’s going to choke on it and die. Wonderful, thoughtful Bucky. Of course he knows what Steve is thinking. Of course he’s going to find the middle ground, a way to extend a hand while letting Steve decide how and when to take it.</p><p>So Steve does the only thing he can do and lurches out of bed to throw himself into Bucky’s arms like a drowning man to a lifebuoy. “Always, always, always.”</p><p>They talk so long that they end up leaning propped up on each other like two playing cards, vertical force the only thing keeping them from falling flat on their faces. Finally, Steve says, “Stay with me?” Bucky pushes him back by the shoulders and peers into Steve’s face. He looks as exhausted as Steve feels; there are sharp lines in the soft skin beside his mouth and the circles under his eyes look like bruises.</p><p>“Only sleep,” he says, and cups Steve’s jaw in his hands and kisses him, slow and soft.</p><p>“Only sleep,” Steve agrees. Then he grins, a little cockiness slipping through against all odds. “Tomorrow is another day.”</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning, Steve wakes up slowly, bit by bit. He feels like he’s being dragged up from the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the pressure slowly diminishing until the water on the surface laps light and cool around him. He feels relaxed, blissed out, drugged, and with that thought he feels a tiny, tiny stab of worry before he realizes that what he feels is rested. Well rested. Exceptionally well rested. He’s never slept so well in his life.</p><p>He turns his head on the pillow and there is Bucky, lying on his stomach, his shirt rucked halfway up his back, his head turned away. His back, where exposed, is a smooth landscape of muscle and bone, and he has one leg hitched up, his toes hidden under the pushed-down bedsheet. Suddenly, everything comes roaring back to Steve in vivid technicolor. Bucky loves him. Bucky <em>kissed</em> him. No wonder he slept so well. He feels like a weather balloon entering the stratosphere; gravity has no hold on him, and everything inside him is expanding.</p><p>He’s not exactly crying, but his nose begins to run and he sniffs, softly. It’s enough, though, that the body beside him shifts and groans. Bucky rolls over and kicks Steve in the leg, and then sits bolt upright in the bed, eyes wide and staring. He whips around to look at Steve, his expression immediately softening, his eyes worried. “Stevie, are you crying?”</p><p>He cups Steve’s cheek with his human hand and Steve turns his face into the touch. “It’s just… yesterday seems too good to be true, but it <em>is </em>true, and I’m still just…” He pauses, sniffling again. “I’m having trouble processing it. It’s overwhelming.”</p><p>“Sweetheart, baby,” Bucky murmurs, and the pet names make Steve’s heart surge up and out of his chest like a runner at the starting gun. He grabs Bucky’s metal arm and drags him down so that he’s lying half on top of Steve, chest to chest, pressing him into the mattress. He doesn’t even want to kiss Bucky, not right now. He just wraps his arms around him and pulls their bodies so tight together that they feel like one extra-big person.</p><p>“Oof,” Bucky grunts. “You’re gonna squish me like a bug.” He laughs, low and soft in Steve’s ear, stroking his metal hand down the bare skin of Steve’s side. They lie pressed together for a few more minutes until Steve stops sniffling. Then Bucky says, “Not to be the voice of reason or anything, but we should get some breakfast. And then we should talk about it.”</p><p>Steve makes a whiny noise in the back of his throat and squirms like a discomfited toddler. “Look,” Bucky says patiently, “how about I go downstairs and toast the rest of the banana bread and make some coffee while you lie here and pout, and then I’ll bring it up and we can eat breakfast in bed and talk.”</p><p>Steve heaves a huge, fake, put-upon sigh. “Okay, fine. But you have to kiss me before you go.”</p><p>Bucky comes back upstairs ten minutes later with a plate piled high with craggy slices of toasted banana bread and two cups of coffee. He hands one to Steve, who burns himself immediately, and then walks around the other side of the bed and gingerly sits down, trying not to spill his own coffee as he swings his legs up. Steve takes pity on him and pushes himself up all the way, propping the pillows up on the headboard and taking the plate from Bucky. They finish the banana bread in no time and then Steve sips at his coffee and stares at his feet making two sharp mountain peaks under the snowy white sheets until Bucky says, “I can hear the gears grinding in your head. Stop it.”</p><p>They sit in silence for a minute more before Steve says, “I can’t talk if I think you might look at me.”</p><p>“Well, c’mere then,” Bucky says. He leans over and puts the plate on the bedside table—<em>his bedside table?</em> Steve thinks with a thrill— then shifts sideways until he’s got his legs crossed loosely on the bed. He reaches over and tugs at Steve’s own legs until he wriggles out from under the covers and into the pliable nest of Bucky’s lap. There, he buries his face in Bucky’s neck and breathes in, filling his lungs with the scent of marigolds and orange blossoms again, and something fainter, like warm skin, like rich, black dirt, like loam, like being buried in a leaf pile. A rebellious shiver slips out from under his control. He reaches tentatively up to Bucky’s ear and takes a lock of hair, wrapping it around his forefinger, and feels some of the tension drain out of him.</p><p>Bucky’s got his arms around him, one at his waist and one on the back of his neck, and he’s leaning his head against the wall. It’s still early, the sky behind the curtains turning pink, though the sun hasn’t crested the rooftops of the houses across the street, yet. It would be easy to fall back asleep like this, if Steve didn’t feel like a tuning fork resonating at concert pitch.</p><p>“Okay,” he begins, though he doesn’t really know what he’s going to say. He still has the lock of hair twisted around his finger; he rolls it lightly against his thumb like a talisman. “I freaked out yesterday. Because… because I had no idea how you felt about me, either you’re really good at hiding it or I’m just oblivious,”—Bucky snickers—“and it was just such a shock to realize that you reciprocated, and then all of a sudden you were kissing me, and it all was happening so fast and I don’t think I could process it all so I started to panic. Like if I’d been hit by lightning.” That simile isn’t nearly good enough; he feels like the words are just falling out of his mouth, bypassing whatever part of his brain makes the nice speeches.</p><p>He takes a deep breath. Marigolds, orange blossom, loam. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve been obsessing about it, actually, and even though I’ve only been conscious of it for a month or two, I think I’ve loved you for a long time, maybe forever, and I was just too fucking stupid to see it. And you may think it’s funny, I can feel you laughing,”—he feels Bucky presses his mouth to the side of his head, though there’s too much of a grin in it to be a proper kiss—“but I’m really angry at myself for all the time I wasted. If only I’d gotten my shit together when we were teenagers, we could have had so much...”</p><p>He notices, with the part of his mind not occupied with heaving the words out of his mouth with a coal shovel, that Bucky’s grip on him has grown tighter and tighter, but it still catches him by surprise when he pulls Steve off his shoulder by the nape of his neck and shakes him like a lioness with a recalcitrant cub. “Stop it.” He kisses Steve once, hard. “Stop it.” He kisses him again, softer, still holding him by the nape. “That’s water under the bridge. You can talk about it with Dr. Castaño all you want, but please, not now, not with me. I can’t start thinking about what-ifs.” He looks so bereft all of a sudden that Steve wants to change positions so that he’s holding Bucky on <em>his</em> lap. But Bucky nudges Steve’s head back down to his shoulder and relaxes his grip again.</p><p>“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” They sit in silence for a moment. The room gets lighter by degrees; Bucky shifts his left hand from Steve’s waist to his thigh and squeezes the bunched-up muscle gently. “But there’s another reason why I’m freaking out, and it’s because…” Steve pauses and clears his throat. “Because… because I’ve never done this before.” He stops talking and holds his breath.</p><p>“This? Sat on another man’s lap?” Bucky sounds amused.</p><p>Steve slides his hand under Bucky’s shirt and pinches the soft skin on his side, lightly, just to make him jump a little. Then he caresses the sting away with his fingertips because he can. “No, jerk, this, all of this. Well, most of this.”</p><p>Bucky puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders and pushes him back until he can peer incredulously into his face. “Do you mean to tell me that you, with this…”—he waves his metal hand up and down between the two of them—“this body, scientifically designed to be fuckin’ perfect in every way, have <em>never had sex?</em>” He sounds affronted, like Steve had just insulted his mother.</p><p>Steve, his face glowing hot with mortification, giving the bright early-morning sun slanting through the window a run for its money, opens his mouth to clarify. But Bucky just barrels right over him. “I mean, you’re like Michelangelo’s David, if David were way hotter and had shoulders like Atlas holding up the world, and I don’t remember having ever seen your dick,”— he pauses for half a second and his eyes glaze over a little—"but it’s gotta be huge, and…”</p><p>“Shut up, Bucky,” Steve says, pushing ineffectually at his metal shoulder, pleading and mortified and annoyed.</p><p>“…and you’re trying to tell me that nobody’s ever wanted to warm your bed at night?”</p><p>Steve makes an inarticulate noise of frustration and vexation, and in his crushing embarrassment and earth-please-swallow-me-up distress, he pushes himself away from Bucky. But he goes the wrong way and falls, flailing, off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud, narrowly missing the sharp corner of the bedside table.</p><p>There he lies, a corpse embarrassed to death. His hip complains from where he landed with all his weight on it and the wool rug is itching his nose, but he doesn’t care; at least his face is hidden. There’s no noise from the bed; either Bucky is too startled by Steve’s graceless exit to laugh, or he’s doing a really good job of stifling it.</p><p>“Just, just don’t, okay?” he groans into the rug after a moment. “I’m not a virgin. Peggy and I fooled around, I’ve got some experience. Not that that matters! Who cares!” He makes an inarticulate noise of distress and clenches his fists where they’re smashed between his chest and the floor.</p><p>Bucky still doesn’t say anything and Steve’s not about to turn over to see if he’s peering over the edge of the bed, so he keeps going. “But we didn’t do much, ‘cause there wasn’t any spare time in the middle of a war, you should know that even if you don’t remember it. So that’s it. I’ve never been with anybody else. And I’ve never been with a… with a man. Even though I wanted to.”</p><p>Bucky starts to say something, but Steve rushes on before he can speak. “And yeah, back then, after the serum, there were tons of people who wanted a piece of this”—he wiggles his hands out from under his chest and spreads his arms out as best as he can, trying not to stir up any of the dust bunnies under the bed—“and here in the glorious future everybody wants a piece of this, too, but that’s the problem. They all just want to ride Captain America’s dick. But that’s some other guy. That’s not <em>me</em>.” He sneezes into the rug and falls silent.</p><p>Bucky scoots to the edge of the bed and steps over Steve’s prone form, then crouches down on the rug beside him. Steve is still facing the other way, looking under the bed where the dust bunnies are regarding him judgmentally. When Bucky reaches out with his metal hand and strokes Steve’s hair, he closes his eyes, a sigh carrying some of the tension out of his body.</p><p>“I’m really sorry, Stevie, I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t realize. I can… I understand, though. That must’ve been rough.” Steve nods. The short pile of the rug scratches his face and it feels good. He nods a couple more times until it starts to burn.</p><p>“You know,” says Bucky, “there are a lot of things to be said for this new body.” He slides his hand down Steve’s back and pauses, just for a second, on Steve’s hip, before he slides it back up and runs his fingers through Steve’s hair again. “But I think you should know, this one time, when I was back in SHIELD, Dr. Zaidi showed me a picture of you before the serum. I don’t know where she got it because I’d never seen it before or since. It must’ve come from your file or something.” Steve turns his head to face Bucky, but can’t bring himself to open his eyes. He doesn’t want to see the look on Bucky’s face; whatever infinitudes of affection are projected there are sure to be too much, too close. Bucky smooths his metal thumb over Steve’s eyebrow, from the bridge of his nose over the arch of his occipital bone, and then does it again and again. Steve relaxes into the rug, soothed in a way he can’t begin to put words to.</p><p>“But you looked like you weighed about ninety-eight pounds with your boots on, with this skinny little bird neck and a jaw like a bone knife, and you were looking off to the side at something out of the frame, and I could not stop thinking about it for weeks. That’s the way I imagined you, you know, sitting on the other side of the door, even though I knew you were actually six-foot-one and built like a fighting bull.”</p><p>With his eyes closed and his body stretched out on the floor and Bucky’s soft voice murmuring in his ear, it’s easy for Steve to imagine himself that way, too, to melt and condense into a smaller, slighter frame. It’s easy to imagine that they’re back in the old apartment, stretched out on the threadbare Turkish carpet that had belonged to a previous tenant, trying to find the slightly cooler pockets of air that appeared sometimes in ephemeral pools on the floor during the interminable July afternoons.  </p><p>“You were so beautiful in that picture, almost unearthly. I told you,” Bucky’s voice comes from right next to his ear and from eighty years away, “that I’m sure I loved you before the war. I know it, even if I don’t remember it, like the way I know that gravity works, and water is wet. I know that I loved you when you were smaller, just as well as I know that I love you now, like this.”</p><p>Steve breathes in deeply and sighs again, but the illusion breaks because the rug smells like good, clean wool and lemon-scented cleaning products rather than decades’ worth of dust and rough lye soap. He opens his eyes and Bucky is looking at him with a tenderness that brings back the sweet sting of impending tears to tickle the inside of his nose.</p><p>“I wish I could remember you like that.” The tenderness turns a little sharp, a little wicked. “I used to imagine it, when I couldn’t stop thinking about that picture, the way the little you would hold me down, how you’d pin me with your sharp knees and your bony little arms and all ninety-eight pounds of you and I wouldn’t be able to break away.” Steve feels himself flush again; why the blood ever bothers to leave his face, he doesn’t know. “I know we weren’t like that, back then, but I still think about it, sometimes, about what it would be like to get fucked through the mattress by a fiery little cherry bomb half my size.” He closes his eyes and grins at whatever he’s seeing, and Steve watches him with a base fascination. Then Bucky licks his lips, slow and sensuous, and Steve whispers, “Jesus.”</p><p>Bucky laughs and opens his eyes again, grinning at Steve in a way that’s both gentle reassurance and lascivious invitation. Steve scoots his upper body closer on the rug. “I guess we should start making up for lost time, then.”</p><p>Bucky’s smile goes softer and he moves his hand to clasp the back of Steve’s neck. “Yeah, but slow. I don’t wanna rush you.”</p><p>“Maybe I wanna rush me,” Steve says, and pushes himself up onto his elbows. The sun is all the way up, now, shining in one glorious block through the thin white curtains and illuminating Bucky from behind. He’s outlined in a fluorescent glow and the reflection of the sun on his metal shoulder throws a handful of bright sparks against the cream-colored wall behind him. Steve reaches up with one hand and pulls Bucky down by the collar of his shirt until he can press a kiss into the dip and curve of the corner of his mouth, and then to his soft, red lips, which part to let Steve’s tongue trace a line between them.</p><p>Bucky sighs quietly and then pulls back to look at him, serious and soft all at once. “Why don’t you let me take care of you, Steve,” he says. “Let me make you feel good.”</p><p>Steve closes his eyes and falls back on the rug again with a <em>whump</em>, his arms giving out underneath him. Some small, crotchety part of him rebels against the idea; <em>but that’s <span class="u">my</span> job</em>, he thinks, like it’s the day he went back to work all over again. He’s supposed to be the caretaker here, he’s the one who should be looking out for Bucky<em>.</em> But in nearly the same moment, he realizes that the stab of panic he’s been waiting for is missing. The stiletto between his ribs has been replaced by a melting pool of arousal and anticipation, a firepot in his belly that glows and glows. Maybe it’s what he needs.</p><p><em>Bucky always knows what I need, </em>he thinks, and the relief is as palpable as it is startling.</p><p>“Steve?” Bucky says, a little sliver of worry in his voice, and Steve can’t have that. So he pushes himself up again, to his knees, this time, and crowds into Bucky’s space. He plants his hands on Bucky’s thighs, right where the hems of his boxer briefs are riding up, skin soft and dusted with dark hair, and leans forward to whisper into his mouth, “Yes. Please.”</p><p>“Okay. Get back up on the bed and lie down,” Bucky says, his breath ghosting over Steve’s wet lips.</p><p>So Steve gets up on the bed and lies down, head on his own pillow, and watches as Bucky pulls Steve’s old raggedy t-shirt off over his head with one hand and then steps out of his boxers as casually as if he were kicking his shoes off in the front hall.</p><p>His cock is still mostly soft, but it’s plump and thick and Steve’s mouth starts to water; some instinctual part of him wants to put it in his mouth, and isn’t that interesting? But before he can form any coherent thoughts about it, Bucky climbs onto the bed and settles down in his lap. Steve bends his knees a little, planting his feet on the bed and making a cradle for Bucky to sit in, naked as the day he was born, a heavy weight pressing Steve’s hips down into the mattress. “Oh,” he sighs as a breath escapes him. Everything about Bucky is heavy, his body, his cock, now half-hard, pressing into Steve’s own, still trapped in his underwear, his gaze as he pins Steve to the bed like the needle point of a compass.</p><p>“Close your eyes,” Bucky says. It’s not an order, but Steve finds he wants to do it anyway; this is Bucky taking care of him, and he wants to let it happen.</p><p>“Can I touch you?” he asks. The darkness behind his eyelids is copper-red and warm.</p><p>“Yeah, if you want, but don’t go sticking your big hands in the way.” Bucky trails his metal hand down Steve’s arm, from his shoulder down to his hand where it’s lying on the bed, and squeezes the nail of his thumb between his fingers.</p><p>“And you?” Steve says, picking his hand up and gesturing blindly toward Bucky’s midsection.</p><p>The metal hand closes lightly around his wrist and pushes it back out of the way. “Let me take care of us both.”</p><p>“Okay.” Steve settles back with one hand behind his head, the other squeezing the meat of Bucky’s thigh above his knee, warm, solid, and alive.</p><p>“Lube still in the drawer on the right?”</p><p>Steve’s eyes fly open at that, the moment put on hold. “How did you know I had lube? And that's where I kept it?”</p><p>Bucky’s face falls; he looks chagrined. “I, uh, I went through the whole house when you first brought me home. I… I couldn’t… I had to, I’m sorry.”</p><p>Steve’s heart breaks a little, but at the same time he wants to crow with delight. <em>Look at you now,</em> he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. “No, no, it’s fine,” he says instead, stroking his hand up and down Bucky’s thigh, reassuring, grounding. “It’s okay, it’s what you had to do to feel safe.”</p><p>Bucky leans forward a little and smooths the fingers of his metal hand over Steve’s cheek. Steve closes his eyes again and turns into the touch, the metal deliciously cool against his hot face. He doesn’t open his eyes when the hand disappears, nor when he feels Bucky lean to the side and pull the drawer open.</p><p>He hears the soft thump of the bottle of lube hitting the bed beside him and then Bucky’s hands are back on his face this time, one on either side. His metal thumb strokes over Steve’s bottom lip, which falls open in response, and then Bucky drags his hands down Steve’s neck, and down his chest. His rough-smooth palms catch on Steve’s nipples, hard already with arousal and the chill of the air-conditioned bedroom, and Steve shivers, arching off the bed just enough that Bucky laughs under his breath and pushes him back down. Down his abs, tight with anticipation, until Bucky’s hands get to the waistband of his underwear. “Can I?” he asks, and Steve groans, “Yes, god, please. You don’t have to ask.”</p><p>Carefully, as if Steve were some precious piece of spun glass nestled in tissue paper, Bucky unwraps him, pulling his boxers down over his hips, working them under his butt and then down his thighs until he can pull them off all the way and toss them aside. “Jesus,” he says, his voice hungry and amused. “I was right.”</p><p>Steve’s eyes are still shut, but he screws them even tighter, as if that’s how he can keep the embarrassment from getting in. “Bucky,” he whines, “please,” not even sure what he’s asking for, not even sure what he wants besides those hands, on him, right now.</p><p>“I gotcha,” Bucky says, and then straddles Steve’s hips again, wrapping his human hand around Steve’s cock and giving him one long, loose stroke from the root to the tip.</p><p>Steve levitates off the bed and his eyes fly open, and the sight of Bucky sitting naked in his lap with his hand—his hand!—wrapped around Steve’s cock is almost too much to bear. This is the culmination of every fantasy he’s had in the last two months— <em>conservatively</em>, he thinks, mental arithmetic to keep the orgasm at bay, <em>two per day for sixty days is a hundred and twenty fantasies and</em>… He shuts his eyes again and tries to focus on not coming in the next ten seconds.  </p><p>Luckily, Bucky pulls his hand away after one more agonizingly delicious stroke, and Steve thinks it’s safe to crack an eye and watch him squeeze lube out onto his fingers. He’s looking down at the bottle, his brow furrowed in concentration as he tries to squeeze just enough out, not too much, not too little. His broad chest is rising and falling rapidly, his cheeks a rosy pink, and Steve is gratified to realize that Bucky’s just as affected by this as he is. But of course he is.</p><p>“Will you…” he asks, and Bucky glances up at him, shutting the cap of the lube with a click and tossing it aside. “Will you kiss me?”</p><p>The room is full of light, like the antechamber to heaven, diffuse but strong enough that Bucky’s pupils are but two flecks of velvet in the sea of blue. “I love you,” Steve says without even thinking about it. The words tumble out of his mouth of their own accord, but they pull his soul out with them, and when Bucky leans down and kisses him, Steve knows he can taste it on his tongue.</p><p>He holds himself propped up over Steve with his metal arm, just enough space between their bodies that he can get his human hand down between them and fist both of their cocks together. Slick skin on a hot palm, and the only thing Steve can do is screw his eyes shut again, grab the headboard behind him with both hands, and give himself up to it.</p><p>Bucky starts out slow and not too tight, just sliding his fist lazily up and down, drawing the pleasure out and panting into Steve’s slack mouth, but it’s still an embarrassingly short amount of time before Steve feels everything in his groin draw up tight toward the focal point.</p><p>They’re both quiet, either from nerves or leftover inhibitions or maybe a kind of reverence; Steve’s not sure. But when Bucky slips a finger between their cocks on the upstroke and squeezes Steve’s glans between his knuckles, Steve lets out a noise that makes a fresh sweat stand out all over his body, it’s so debauched, so filthy. And when Bucky does it again, Steve comes with a whimper all over his stomach, jerking his hips up helplessly so that Bucky overbalances and falls face-first into Steve’s neck. But he keeps working his fist over both of their cocks between the press of their bodies until Steve starts to thrash his head back and forth on the pillow, overstimulated beyond belief, and then he’s coming with a grunt, adding to the mess that’s already cooling on Steve’s stomach.</p><p>It takes a while for them both to come back down to earth. Bucky’s breath is warm and humid on Steve’s neck, and the hair falling out of its already-messy bun is tickling Steve’s nose. Most of his weight is on Steve’s chest, though he’s still propping himself up on his metal arm, but Steve doesn’t mind.</p><p>“Fuck,” he breathes, floating a little on a cotton-candy cloud of sticky pink.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says. He turns his head just enough that he can press a kiss to the pulse jumping erratically in Steve’s throat, and then pushes himself back up with a groan. Some distant part of Steve pulls a disgusted face at the feeling of the half-dried come that sticks them together, but it’s easy to ignore.</p><p>Bucky hovers over him, his hands braced on the mattress on either side of Steve’s head. His finely-drawn face, serious in the bright sunlight, looks like the portrait of a saint picked out in gold on the wall of a cathedral somewhere. <em>No</em>, Steve thinks<em>, he’s the cathedral itself, the house of god</em>. He says again, “Hey, I love you.”</p><p>Then Bucky smiles, and the warmth that spreads across his face transforms him from a cathedral into a home, snug and happy. He’s Steve’s home, and Steve knows he’ll live there until the day he dies. </p><p>“I love you, too,” Bucky says, and laughs, low and joyful and dipped in shining gold.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I am behind on answering comments but just so you know, you people who comment on each chapter I SEE you and I LOVE you and you are the BEST and when this is all done I will personally light a candle for each of you in the Bucky-cathedral.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. August</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Thanks for moving my appointment up,” he says to Dr. Castaño at the beginning of August. She’d been in Menorca for the last two weeks of July and he’d already had an appointment on the calendar for August 7th, but he felt like he was waking up every morning with itching powder under his skin. It was a restlessness that expanded outward from an invisible center, and he wanted to talk about it. He needed to talk about it.</p><p>“No problem, Steve. Was there a specific reason why you wanted to see me earlier?” She’s looking at him with mild curiosity, but not alarm. He bites on his bottom lip, trying futilely to keep from breaking out into a grin.</p><p>“Yeah, uh. So Bucky and I are together.” He tries to sound nonchalant but overshoots by approximately the distance between the Earth and the Moon.</p><p>She gives him a shrewd look over the top of her glasses, which are wire-rimmed half-moons today. She seems to have a different pair every time he comes to her office. “You mean you’re in a romantic relationship?”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, we are.” And there it is, there’s his grin, he wants to scrunch up his own eyes with how blindingly bright it feels inside his own head.</p><p>“Oh, Steve,” Dr. Castaño exclaims with a smile that almost matches his own, “congratulations! I’m so happy for you.”</p><p>They grin megawatt smiles at each other for a moment before Steve hangs his head in mock-shame and says, “You can say, ‘I told you so.’”</p><p>“Now, why would I do a thing like that?”</p><p>They both laugh, and Steve’s face starts to hurt a little from the grinning.</p><p>“But, I suspect,” Dr. Castaño says, picking up the black notebook she always has at hand for their appointments, “that wasn’t the only reason you wanted to see me.”</p><p>He looks at the bookshelf behind her head and tries to remember what he’d rehearsed in his mind on the way here. The shelf has been rearranged; some of the clinical handbooks are gone, replaced by a stack of tattered old Penguins. “No, I, uh, no.”</p><p>She lets him stew in his own thoughts for a moment before she changes tactics. “So, now that your feelings are out in the open, how has this changed your relationship with Bucky?”</p><p>Steve gapes for a moment, thinking, <em>obviously it’s changed everything, what kind of a question is that</em>, but then he considers it for a moment and realizes that no, that’s not it at all.</p><p>The days are the same. Steve goes into Manhattan for training, comes home and eats whatever Bucky prepares for lunch, then they lie around all afternoon reading or watching TV until it’s time to start thinking about dinner.</p><p>Their physical relationship is different, of course. Now, when he walks into the front hall, patting down his pockets to make sure he has his phone, his wallet, and his keys, Bucky follows him and grabs his elbow before he can open the door, spinning him around and catching his mouth in a hot, filthy kiss.</p><p>And now, when he gets home, the same thing happens in reverse. Sometimes, he slips in through the door without saying anything, knowing that Bucky can hear him but hoping that he’ll pretend to be surprised anyway. Steve finds him wherever he is, in the kitchen, in the garden, putting clean clothes away in their closet. He tip-toes up behind him, then in one smooth movement, buries his face in the hair tumbling down over Bucky’s neck and slides his hands around his sides to cup his belly and pull him into the parabola of his embrace.</p><p>He doesn’t go to sleep alone anymore; he doesn’t wake up alone anymore. Almost every night Bucky lays him out on the bed and says, “Let me take care of you, Steve,” and then does things to Steve’s body with his hands that leave him floating on a cloud, halfway to sleep before he’s even come down from his orgasm all the way.</p><p>But therein lies the problem. That’s the itch, the annoying mosquito-drone of dissonance in his ear that he just can’t shake, no matter how happy he is, no matter how far off the Earth’s surface he’s floating.</p><p>He answers Dr. Castaño’s last question first. “Actually, not that much has changed. I mean, we still do the same things we did before, we treat each other the same way, we’re basically the same as we were before, it’s just that now, we can be open about it. Before, I was afraid I was crossing a line, and now I know there’s no line there at all. Or, at least, it’s so far away I can’t even see it.”</p><p>Dr. Castaño asks him about boundaries and expectations and draws him out a little further. They talk about that for a while longer, but Steve finally circles back around to what’s really been gnawing at his mind like the serpent that gnaws at the root of the world tree.</p><p>“When we first… talked about it, I had a panic attack or something like it, I’m not really sure what it was. And, and even though I felt comfortable with him, with this change in our relationship, when I thought about it, about…”—he clears his throat uncomfortably—"about having sex with him, I felt this little stab of panic, like not exactly a full-blown panic attack, but not comfortable, either. But then…”</p><p>Dr. Castaño is doing her trick, annoying but effective, of doodling mysterious sigils in her notebook, appearing not to be paying attention at all, letting him think out loud.</p><p>“But then he told me, ‘Let me take care of you, Steve,’ and that… that was it. That was the key. Then I was fine, there was no panic, it was like that’s what I needed.”</p><p>“You say, ‘it’s <em>like</em> that’s what I needed,’ which implies that you think it’s not <em>actually </em>what you needed. Is that true?”</p><p>He clenches his jaw, prodding absently with his fingers at the tension in the muscle that jumps out in his cheek. “No. I… I did need it.”</p><p>“And? How did that make you feel, to realize that you needed it?”</p><p>Steve rolls his eyes. “Okay, Dr. Freud.” He knows he’s getting defensive, he knows he’s acting like a petulant child, but he also knows that this is what happens every time she prods at the sore parts of him. He’s clenching his jaw to keep her from drawing the rotten tooth, but it’s token resistance. He knows the tooth has to come out, one way or another.</p><p>“Don’t disparage my methods,” she says simply, not offended. “Just answer the question.”</p><p>He heaves a sigh. “It was difficult. Part of me didn’t want to give in. But in the end, it was good. I didn’t panic about it, it was fine. But...”</p><p>“But what?”</p><p>“But I’m the one who should be taking care of him!” he bursts out.</p><p>One glimpse of her face and he has to close his eyes, massage his temples with his fingertips. So knowing, so wise; it’s so irritating to talk to someone who knows him better than he knows himself. “Why?” she asks.</p><p>“Why? Because, because of everything! I know... I know you don’t know everything that happened to him, you can’t, but you know enough. He deserves to be taken care of after everything he’s gone through.”</p><p>He’s still not looking at her, but he can hear the way she draws in a breath and hums quietly, considering her answer. “I understand how it may seem that way because it’s an easy conclusion to draw. But wasn’t a loss of agency part of his suffering? Doesn’t he also deserve to determine what he wants for himself?”</p><p>The questions hit him like an open-handed slap to the side of his face. He almost jerks back at the invisible blow. <em>Fuck. FUCK.</em> “I… yeah. Yeah, of course.”</p><p>She pushes the box of Kleenex across the desk toward him, just in case. “Now, just because he wants to take care of you doesn’t mean that you need to want it too. Remember when we talked about compromise?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”</p><p>She makes a note in her black book and then looks back up at him over the tops of her glasses. “So, do you?”</p><p>“Do what?”</p><p>“Do you want him to take care of you?”</p><p>Steve shifts restlessly in his seat, staring down at his knees sticking out of his shorts, looking too bony and brittle to withstand the torture he puts them through every day. “I don’t need to be taken care of.”</p><p>“That’s not the question I asked, Steve.”</p><p>He heaves a sigh, slides down in the chair until his feet are all the way under her desk and the back of his neck is caught on the back of the chair, tipping his head up so all he can see is the ceiling, embossed with wreaths of dusty plaster grapes around the long cord of the light fixture.</p><p>“Can’t you let me off the hook? Just this once?”</p><p>She laughs softly. “Sure, I’m not going to force you to talk about anything. You’re the one that has to want to take the step, to cross the divide, that’s the whole point.”</p><p>“But?” He glances back down, finds her watching him steadily, her expression inscrutable.</p><p>She shrugs, looks down at her notebook again.</p><p>“Fine. Fine!” He throws his hands up in exasperation, slides down the chair even further. He’s almost horizontal now; he knows that he looks ridiculous, and he feels a second’s-worth of derision and disgust at himself before he pushes himself back upright into a proper sitting position.</p><p>“Let me ask you something else, maybe it will be easier if we approach this in a roundabout way.“</p><p>“Trying to sneak up on me? Get inside my defenses?”</p><p>“Yes, exactly.” They both laugh. “How do you feel when he’s taking care of you?”</p><p>Steve thinks about Bucky making him breakfast, pancakes and waffles and toast with butter and strawberry jam, about Bucky coming inside with a handful of sun-hot cherry tomatoes and popping them into Steve’s mouth one by one with his warm, penny-tasting fingers, about the stream of constant texts he gets from Bucky when he’s away, nonsensical, immaterial, but grounding, nonetheless. He thinks about when Bucky lays him out on the bed, when he takes Steve apart with his quick, sure hands, when he swats Steve’s own hands gently out of the way and says, “Just let me do it.” How it feels to make Bucky feel good, but by following his lead, not by taking control. How easy it is to let him, how right it feels.</p><p>“I feel really good.”</p><p>“Now, I know you know this, I know you’re going to say I don’t need to tell you.” She holds up a hand, staving off his objections. “And we’ve talked about this before, in other contexts. It’s okay to feel what you feel, but it’s very important that you’re aware that feelings and emotions need to be examined in depth, that we use them, sometimes unknowingly, as excuses, as shields. Remember when we talked about your misplaced sense of guilt?”</p><p>“Yeah.” It’d been ages ago, now, months and months, when Bucky was still in SHIELD custody.</p><p>“Well, I think you also have a misplaced sense of duty, or obligation.”</p><p>“Seems like I misplace everything.” He laughs, a little wildly.</p><p>“No, that’s not true. Do you have a misplaced sense of loyalty? Of trust?”</p><p>The first thing his mind does is run back to Pierce, to Rumlow and the rest of the STRIKE team, to the government he’d given his life and his body to. But that wasn’t misplaced loyalty or trust. Given what he knew, he was right to trust them; the betrayal was on their end.</p><p>And then he thinks about his team, about Nat, Clint, about Sam. About Bucky.</p><p>“No, no, I don’t.”</p><p>“Do you think you misplace the love you give?”</p><p>“No.” The answer is swift.</p><p>“Then learn to trust yourself. You should also trust Bucky and his capacity for self-determination, but above all, Steve, take a good hard look at your feelings, and then learn to trust yourself.”</p>
<hr/><p>Steve tries, he makes the effort. It’s hard, but he sternly reminds himself, <em>trust his capacity for self-determination </em>and <em>you feel good when he takes care of you</em> whenever he starts to feel guilty about it.</p><p>But then, a few days later, they’re lying in bed at midnight, the air conditioner humming tunelessly in the window. Bucky is on his back with a book held up in his metal hand and Steve is draped half on top of him, cheek nestled on the soft pillow of his chest, their legs tangled together under the sheet. Bucky has got the fingers of his human hand trailing lazily back and forth across Steve’s shoulders, and Steve is positively wallowing in the decadent pleasure of doing nothing but listening to the slow beat of Bucky’s heart.</p><p>“You know,” he murmurs on a whim, “how I said that I’d just realized how I felt about you a couple months ago? That’s a funny story, actually. You remember the night that I got back from the mission with a broken leg and we lay down on the bed to debrief because I couldn’t stand up?”</p><p>Bucky closes his book with his metal thumb marking his page and says, “Mmhmm?” Steve can’t see his face, but he can hear the smug smirk, clear as a bell.</p><p>“Well, you were talking about the garden and I was spacing out and all of a sudden I realized that I was getting hard. Didn’t even wait for my permission, my body was just like ‘Ring ring, hello, I want to have sex with this man right now.’”</p><p>Bucky laughs out loud and to Steve, his ear flush against the hollow of Bucky’s collarbone, it sounds like a timpani reverberating through the acoustic chamber of his chest. Bucky cranes his head to the side and plants a smacking kiss on the top of Steve’s head.</p><p>“And that was the start of two months of living hell. I’ve been panting after you ever since then but I had to hide it because I didn’t know that you felt the same way.”</p><p>Bucky tosses his book carelessly down the bed and then pokes Steve in the side with his metal fingers, cold as ice from the air conditioning. Steve makes an undignified noise and wiggles a little to get away. “Yeah, it was obvious,” Bucky says. “Remember you told me you could tell how I was doing at SHIELD because you could hear my heartbeat through the door? Goes both ways, pal.”</p><p>Steve pushes himself up with both hands on either side of Bucky’s chest and looks down at him. He knows he looks the very picture of righteous outrage, his mouth hanging open and his eyebrows beetled together over the bridge of his nose. “James Buchanan Barnes. You mean that you <em>knew?</em> Like, before the day I told you??” His voice goes high and squeaky with indignation on the last word.</p><p>Bucky grins his wicked grin and wiggles his arms out from where Steve’s got them pinned to his sides, then stretches them upward and laces his fingers together behind his head. “Yep.” He pops the p with relish. “It wasn’t just that your heart sped up every time I came in the room. I knew something had changed in the way you felt, I knew you suddenly wanted to take me to bed. That much was obvious from the look on your face every time I caught you staring at me. Not to mention that you started to bring me gifts like a goddamn bowerbird.” He pulls his hand from behind his head and presses his thumb into the wrinkle between Steve’s furious eyebrows, but Steve just scowls harder. “And really sweet, thoughtful ones, too. Your love was obvious, you couldn’t have hidden it if you tried.” His grin is wicked, but his eyes are meltingly soft, the bright blue tempered to smelted nickel in the low light of the one bedside lamp.</p><p>“Oh,” Steve starts, but he suddenly can’t talk around the now-familiar lump in his throat. So he just flops back down on top of Bucky and wraps himself tighter around his torso.</p><p>Bucky giggles. “Don’t get too sentimental, I’ve also spent the last two months trying to break you. Walking around the house in my underwear? Doing the gardening in those tiny running shorts? And especially,” he continues, barreling over Steve’s spluttering, “that one time I was rubbing your legs after you ran all the way to fucking Connecticut and I kept moving higher and higher up the backs of your thighs?” Steve is almost breathless with indignation. “I was trying to get you to crack. Unfortunately, you fell asleep before I got to your glutes.”</p><p>Steve jerks out a laugh, “Hah!” and rolls off Bucky to the other side of the bed, his legs tangling up in the sheet. “I hate you. You asshole. You punk-ass motherfucker.”</p><p>Bucky laughs delightedly and crawls over, leaning over Steve on one elbow and stroking Steve’s chest with his human fingers, down his sternum, over and over again.</p><p>Steve fists his hands into the bedsheets at his sides and resolutely does not look at him. “These last few months have been excruciating. I’ve never jerked off so much in my entire life.”</p><p>Bucky grins down at him fondly. “Did you really not notice that I was treating you differently, too?”</p><p>Steve frowns. Has he really been so self-absorbed that he ignored a change in Bucky’s behavior? “No… no, I didn’t. I was too busy trying to keep my own feelings from spilling out all over the place. It was like trying to hold back a tsunami, I don’t think I had the energy to notice anything else.”</p><p>Bucky moves his hand up to smooth it down Steve’s cheek and then tugs his earlobe lightly.</p><p>“It was good that it worked out this way, though. I… I knew that your feelings for me had changed, but I also knew that we weren’t like that, before.” Steve opens his mouth, but Bucky lays a forefinger across his lips. “Shut up and let me talk. I thought we could be like that now, especially after you came out to me, but I wasn’t sure that I was ready to take the next step, either. I’m still a little… you know.” He pulls his finger off of Steve’s mouth and waggles it near his own temple. Steve sucks in a deep breath, about to jump in and defend Bucky from himself, but Bucky narrows his eyes and says, “I thought I told you to shut up. So, you may just be a crusty old punk from Brooklyn, but I trusted your judgement in this more than I trusted my own. I thought that once you were ready, I would probably be ready too.”</p><p><em>Trust his capacity for self-determination</em>, Dr. Castaño had said. But now it takes on a whole other dimension, and Steve is no longer sure who is following whose lead. It’s like changing the perspective on an optical illusion and watching it spring from two into three dimensions.</p><p>It was easy to think, at the beginning, that it was his job to take care of Bucky, and just as easy, after he pushed through the initial resistance, to accept that maybe Bucky could be taking care of him, instead. But now he realizes with dismay that it’s more complicated than that, that there are nuances, that maybe it’s situationally dependent. <em>Maybe we have to take care of each other</em>, he thinks, and it’s so laughably obvious that he almost pulls his hand out from where it’s trapped under Bucky’s hip to smack himself in the face.</p><p>After a moment, though, he gets his feet under him enough that he can ask, “And were you ready?”</p><p>“I was.” Bucky grins.</p><p>“Good,” Steve says, pushing all thoughts of leading and following and caretaking away. ‘”Cause that’s two months of missed orgasms you’ve gotta make up to me.”</p><p>“You didn’t miss them, you just said yourself that you’d never jerked off so much in your life.”</p><p>Steve grabs the pillow from the other side of the bed and bashes him over the head with it, chanting “fuck you, fuck you” while Bucky laughs and laughs, but then he rips the pillow away and pins both of Steve’s hands above his head and growls, “You just say the word,” and Steve’s mouth makes a noise of its own accord that sounds like an amateur violinist tuning up, all the blood in his head rushing southward so fast that his vision whites out around the edges.</p>
<hr/><p>The next week, Natasha and Clint get back from their extended op, and Steve runs into her accidentally in the Tower lobby as he’s getting ready to leave for the day. She’s dressed in checkered Vans, hot pink basketball shorts, and a bright yellow crop top with a smiley face on it, her coppery hair in two pigtail braids and shiny black Wayfarers pushed up on top of her head. Steve knows her tells, or some of them, and he knows that when she dresses like this, it means that the mission was a hard one. The more difficult it is to process the emotional aftermath of a mission, the more casual Natasha gets when they’re back in New York. <em>At least it’s not pajamas</em>, he thinks. <em>Not as bad as it could have been</em>.</p><p>“Rogers,” she calls from the doorway of the lobby Starbucks as he walks past her without noticing her, his mind occupied with other things. “Where do you think you’re going?”</p><p>“Nat, hey!” He wheels around and grabs her in a side hug. “I heard you were back, but I thought you’d still be tied up in meetings all day.”</p><p>She puts her frappuccino down on a nearby café table and hugs him back with both arms, squeezing his waist hard. Then she takes a step back and looks him up and down. “Steve,” she says, and a slow smile steals across her face. “Steve! Congratulations.”</p><p>“Congratulations about what?” he asks, although he knows that she has him pinned like a butterfly in a glass case.</p><p>She smirks at him, all dimples and glinting eyes. “You know. And you know I know. And you know you can’t hide anything from me, so don’t try to deny it.”</p><p>He rubs the back of his neck, happy and embarrassed. “Yeah, I told him that you’d figure it out the minute you saw my face.”</p><p>“Well, that and the fact that you smell like orange blossoms.” Her smirk grows deeper and she picks up her drink, patting him on the arm with her other hand. “Let’s take a walk. I was gonna go right back upstairs, but I could take a stroll around the block. You know, to catch up.” She wiggles her eyebrows and slurps iced coffee through her straw.</p><p>They leave the Tower and walk toward Bryant Park. “So, tell me everything,” Natasha says as they dodge the tourists crowding the sidewalk.</p><p>“Um, it’s been, I guess, a little more than two weeks? Since… since it all came out. Since we’ve been together, I guess.” He feels a little thrill at admitting it out loud, like the words are taking physical form in the muggy August afternoon air, like if he can say them, they’re real, and he’s not about to wake up bereft from the loveliest dream. Mixed in with the thrill is a hearty dose of embarrassment, of course. Like an idiot, he didn’t anticipate that Natasha was going to grill him, but he definitely should have.</p><p>“I can’t believe you didn’t text me,” she says, and nudges him lightly with her sharp little elbow.</p><p>“Nat, you were on comms blackout, what was I supposed to do, get Hill to authorize communication so that I could tell you that Bucky and I were necking?”</p><p>She rolls her eyes and slurps on her straw again. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Rogers. So anyway, what happened?”</p><p>He glances around, terminally suspicious about smartphones and paparazzi. Natasha links her arm through his and pulls him close. “I’m keeping an eye out, you just focus on your story.”</p><p>“Okay,” he says, relieved. “So… so we were in the kitchen one day, and he was listening to music and this song came on, I don’t even remember which one now, but… but I looked at him, and when he looked at me, I knew. That he knew.” He scrubs his free hand through his hair. “Sorry, I’m not telling it very well. You should ask him, he’d spin a much better story.”</p><p>“Maybe I will,” Natasha says, rattling the ice in the bottom of her cup. “So he knew how you felt about him, huh?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, getting a little fired up in spite of himself, still a little indignant about it. “And he’d known for months! He was just waiting for me to make the first move.”</p><p>Natasha laughs at him, a full-blown cackle, and then squeezes his arm in hers. “Sounds like maybe you should have taken my advice, Rogers. Sounds like maybe”—she clamps down on his arm so hard the nerve twinges—”I know what the fuck I’m talking about.”</p><p>“I’ll never doubt you again, I swear to god,” Steve says, slapping his other hand over his heart.</p><p>They walk in silence for another moment until Natasha looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “So, you’re happy?”</p><p>“Never been happier in my life.” He knows his face looks like a birthday cake blazing with candles, putting the late-summer sun to shame, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t mind if Natasha sees him like this.</p><p>He glances down at her and sees her smile, soft and genuine, spreading from ear to ear. “I’m happy for you,” she says. “So he’s treating you right? Do I need to give him the shovel talk?”</p><p>Steve is startled into a laugh. “Christ, I know you’re like my big sister, but I think I can handle myself here. And so can he. I’ve been wanting to… to take it slow. And he’s okay with that. Really okay. Everything is perfect, actually. He’s perfect. He’s… you know. He’s Bucky.” And, fuck everything, there’s the tickle in his nose, the burning in his eyes; he’s about to cry from happiness in the middle of a crowded Manhattan park, god damn himself.</p><p>She nods slowly, and then furrows her delicate brow. “Taking it slow? So you mean you guys haven’t…” She starts to make an obscene gesture with her hands but Steve slaps them down. “Naaaaaat,” he hisses through his teeth, “stop!”</p><p>She glares at him and says, “Okay, okay, don’t get your panties in a twist. You’re allowed to go at your own pace. I just find it funny that Steve ‘On Va Voir’ Rogers wants to take it slow.” She squeezes his arm again in hers. “It’s cool, though. You do you.”</p><p>They’ve done the loop and now they’re back at the entrance of the park again. Natasha says, “I need to get back to the Tower. Are you heading home?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says as they cross the street. “I’ve got things to do this afternoon.”</p><p>Natasha elbows him in the ribs. “That’s dehumanizing, Steve. Don’t call Bucky a thing.”</p><p>Steve sticks out his tongue and gives her the finger as she walks, cackling, back through the door of the Tower.</p>
<hr/><p>They still haven’t progressed beyond hand jobs and embarrassingly juvenile but extremely gratifying dry humping, because Bucky refuses to push him and Steve… Steve is extremely satisfied. Why push? He knows why, obviously he does, he envisions a future in which fucking, actual fucking, is a part of their sex life. In fact, it’s impossible to avoid envisioning it because Bucky had quickly gotten over whatever reticence or embarrassment was holding him back the first time and has turned into the worst kind of dirty talker.</p><p>It’s like a game; they both know that the things he says are fantasy, at least for the moment, that both of them are content with the way things are. But when Bucky comes up behind him when he’s folding laundry on the couch and grabs Steve by the hips, grinding his crotch up into the crease of Steve ass, and says, “Wish I was flexible enough to fuck you and suck you off at the same time,” Steve closes his eyes and thinks about Bucky’s mouth on him, Bucky inside him, Bucky all around him in impossible ways, and feels his orgasm rushing toward him, a sound in his ears like the crack of a line drive off the end of a wooden baseball bat.</p><p>Finally, one day, something happens. He’s in the kitchen slicing tomatoes for sandwiches when Bucky comes in from the living room and plasters himself to Steve’s side like a barnacle. Steve carefully opens the jar of mayonnaise before he wraps one arm around Bucky’s shoulders. With the other hand he awkwardly slathers mayo on the slices of bread he’s set on two plates while Bucky nuzzles into his frankly disgusting sweaty armpit and rubs his crotch against Steve’s hip, working that side of his basketball shorts further and further south. “Buck,” Steve says, but Bucky keeps going, attaching his mouth to Steve’s collarbone like a suction cup and drawing a gasp out of Steve with his teeth.</p><p>Steve closes his eyes and drops the knife on the counter, where it rebounds and clatters on the floor. Neither one of them makes a move to pick it up.</p><p>Steve uses the arm around Bucky’s shoulders to maneuver him around to his front, detaching his mouth from Steve’s collarbone with an obscene sucking pop. Steve uses his brute strength to steamroll him back against the counter, grabbing Bucky by his hipbones (<em>Like they evolved specially to be sex handles</em>, he marvels, silently, for the umpteenth time) and grinding up against him.</p><p>Bucky reaches behind him and grabs the counter and bites his lip and smirks. Then he raises his hands to Steve’s chest and, after giving his pecs an experimental squeeze, pushes him away. “Wait, Stevie. I came over here for something else.”</p><p>Steve’s own hands are busy yanking Bucky’s shirt sleeve over his left arm. “What, a sandwich? You were the one who interrupted me, pal.”</p><p>“No, no, it’s a sex thing.” Steve pauses and Bucky finishes pulling his own shirt over his head. His bun is now half-undone and his hair is falling down around his face like a tattered curtain.</p><p>Steve reaches up and pulls the elastic all the way out, then runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair, tucking it neatly behind his ears. “So…” he says, drawing it out.</p><p>“It’s been a while now and I was thinking that maybe you might be ready to move on to the next thing?” Bucky is still leaning against the counter, and he lifts his human hand, pinching Steve’s earlobe lightly and then running the back of his fingers down Steve’s jaw. “No pressure. Absolutely no pressure, and I really mean that, I’m happy to make out and give you hand jobs for the rest of our lives if that’s what you want. But if it’s okay with you, I really wanna blow you.” He tucks his chin and smolders at Steve through his lashes.</p><p>God, that look does things to Steve, and they both know it. Even though there’s only a two-inch difference between them, there’s something about the way that Bucky tucks his chin and looks through his lashes that makes Steve feel ten feet tall. “Yeah,” he starts, but it comes out like microphone feedback, so he clears his throat and starts again. “Yeah, I think I’m ready for that.”</p><p>Bucky starts to grin, but then visibly bites it back. “Are you sure? I don’t wanna rush you.” He sticks his hands in Steve’s armpits and strokes hard down his sides, grounding and calming, petting him like a ruffled cat. “I’m serious.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know you are. But I think I’m ready. Just…” Steve clears his throat again and trails the tips of his fingers through Bucky’s dark chest hair. “I took a shower this morning but I then went to training and I was just now outside picking tomatoes and I’m sweaty as hell, so I’m gonna go shower again, okay?”</p><p>Bucky makes a little thready sound in the back of his throat and when Steve looks up his eyes are wide and dark. “No, no no no. Oh, no, Stevie. Don’t you dare.” Now he’s the one grabbing Steve’s hips and maneuvering him so his back is to the counter. He sticks his fingers in Steve’s waistband and, in one swift movement, crouches down and pulls Steve’s shorts and underwear into a puddle around his ankles.</p><p>“Isn’t that, uh, kinda gross?” Steve manages to squeak out. In answer, Bucky puts his hands on Steve’s thighs and licks a slow, messy stripe up the underside of his cock, already as hard as it’s possible to get. Steve’s knees buckle and he almost falls on top of Bucky before he remembers to grab onto the counter. “Maybe,” Bucky says. “Maybe not.” He looks Steve in the eye, and Steve feels like he’s been pierced by a flaming arrow. “But don’t knock it ‘til you try it, Stevie.”</p><p>“Oh… oh… okay…” Steve manages to say, and it’s the last coherent thing that comes out of his mouth for the next five minutes. He never would have even lasted five minutes if Bucky hadn’t set out to tease him agonizingly, giving him little nips here and licks there, using just the sharp tip of his pink tongue and only taking Steve all the way into his mouth at the very last minute.</p><p>Time melts slow and thick like old, dark honey and then snaps back into motion with a zing as Steve tips over the edge with a whimper and a groan, spilling his come onto the back of Bucky’s velveteen tongue. Bucky catches every last drop and then sits back on his heels and looks exceedingly pleased with himself while Steve feels dizzy and weak and a little baffled. “Where the fuck did you learn how to do that?” he finally manages to gasp, and Bucky looks impossibly more smug.</p><p>“I’ve been on the internet a time or two,” he says airily. “I know things.” Then before Steve can offer to return the favor, probably poorly, he pops to his feet and breezes out of the room with a wicked laugh. Steve is left leaning back against the counter, pants around his ankles, feeling like he’s fallen down the staircase of pleasure and hit every step on the way.</p>
<hr/><p>One day, Steve comes home from the Tower in the middle of the afternoon, tired, hot, and sticky. “Buck, I’m home!” he yells from the doorway, and then strips down to his underwear in the hallway. He walks into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of iced tea and then pushes through the screen door to the back deck. Bucky is standing next to the tomato beds, his back to Steve, holding something in the crook of his metal arm and talking to himself. “Hey baby,” Steve says, but when Bucky turns around, Steve sees that he is holding… an actual baby.</p><p>He says, “Where did you get a baby?” at the same time that Bucky says, “Shit, put some clothes on!” and holds up his human hand to cover the baby’s eyes.</p><p>“But… baby… there’s a baby, where did you get a baby?” Steve repeats, thrown for a loop. Very briefly, the panic-ridden thought <em>Did I forget I had a baby?? </em>flashes across the stock ticker of his mind before he shakes his head hard to clear it.  </p><p>Bucky is trying to keep the baby’s eyes covered, but the baby keeps popping up over his hand like a jack-in-the-box, extremely interested in the new person who has just appeared on the scene. “Found her in the cabbage patch, Steve, jesus, did nobody tell you where babies come from?” Bucky’s glaring at him now. “And go put on some f… effin’ clothes, we’ve got company,” he hisses.</p><p>Steve feels like he’s missed the whole middle act of a postmodernist play. “Company? The baby is company?”</p><p>“For christ’s sake, Steve,” Bucky starts, but right at that moment the door of the greenhouse opens and a woman walks out. Steve recognizes her as their next-door neighbor; they’ve never spoken, but he waves at her a couple of times a month on his way in or out of the house. She’s tall with dark hair, reminds him a little of Maria Hill, except that her face is round and soft, none of Maria’s shrewd cynicism in her rich brown eyes. She’s wearing a pair of raggedy shorts and a Penguins hockey jersey with the sleeves ripped off and her feet are shoved into a pair of Birkenstocks that look like they’re older than she is.</p><p>“James, you were right about the Tahitian lime,” she’s saying. “That’s definitely powdery mildew, so you’re gonna have to… oh!” She startles when she sees Steve standing in his underwear on the back deck.</p><p>“Oh jeez,” Steve says, and whirls around, slamming through the screen door and calling over his shoulder, “Sorry, be right back!”</p><p>“I apologize, he’s real stupid sometimes,” he hears Bucky say as he rushes through the kitchen.</p><p>Steve runs up the stairs, pausing to pick up his sweaty workout clothes from the hallway floor, and goes into the bathroom to splash water on his face and try to get his hair to look like it wasn’t rumpled up inside his motorcycle helmet five minutes ago. Then he pulls on a clean pair of shorts and a t-shirt and runs back downstairs again. Bucky and the baby and the woman are still standing in front of the greenhouse when he comes through the screen door.</p><p>“Hi, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t expecting company,” he says, weaving around the garden beds and holding his hand out. “I’m Steve. You’re the next-door neighbor, right?”</p><p>“Sure am,” she says with a laugh, and shakes his hand. “I’m Samara and this”—she gestures toward the baby who is busy yanking on Bucky’s hair—“is Freja.”</p><p>Steve holds out a finger for the baby to shake, but she just sticks out her tongue and says, “Thbbft[PP1] ”and continues pulling on Bucky’s hair like she’s ringing the bells of Notre Dame. Bucky just grins and says, “Freja here threw a ball clear over the wall and they came over half an hour ago to get it back.” He gestures to the eight-foot privacy fence around their backyard, and then carefully disengages the baby’s fingers from his hair. “You’ve got a helluva arm there, kiddo. Gonna be the next Christy Mathewson, isn’t that right?”</p><p>Watching Bucky hold a baby makes something inside Steve sizzle like butter on a hot griddle, but he remembers his manners and says, “Do you wanna come inside? It’s pretty hot out here. Would you like a drink? We’ve got cold green tea and beer and, uh, there’s also strawberry ice cream in the freezer.”</p><p>“Ice cream? Don’t have to ask me twice,” Samara says, following him up the stairs to the deck and through the kitchen door. Once inside, Steve gets the ice cream out of the freezer and starts to dish it out, and Samara holds out her arms for Freja, who twists in Bucky’s arms with a shriek, throwing herself toward the ground. “Jesus, kid,” he says, catching her around the legs and handing her upside down to Samara. “You think you can fly or what?”</p><p>“Probably,” Samara says, tucking Freja under her arm like a sentient football. “No sense of self-preservation. It’s a full time job just making sure she doesn’t get herself killed.”</p><p>Bucky pats her consolingly on the shoulder as Steve hands him two bowls of ice cream and a handful of spoons. “I’m in the exact same situation with Steve, myself. We should start a Caregivers of Reckless Idiots therapy group.”</p><p>“Watch it,” Steve growls, narrowing his eyes and menacing Bucky with his own spoon. Samara laughs and they arrange themselves around the table in the dining room. Freja scrabbles with her tiny little fingers on the tabletop, trying to reach the bowl of ice cream by psychokinesis or possibly just brute strength, so Samara hands her a spoon as a distraction. She immediately pokes herself in the eye with it and starts to scream. Steve jumps up so fast his chair screeches on the hardwood floor and says, all in a panic, “Oh my god, is it bad? What does she need? Should I get the first aid kit? Should I call a doctor?”</p><p>Samara shakes her head and makes soothing noises and motions for him to sit back down, while Bucky plucks a marigold from the vase on the sideboard and waves it in Freja’s line of sight. She grabs for it and stops wailing, though her chin keeps trembling until she finally gets her fingers around its thin stem. “Steve was an only child,” Bucky says, and Samara nods knowingly. “In fact, I’m not sure he’s ever even held a baby before. Have you ever held a baby, Steve?”</p><p>Steve looks back and forth between them, feeling a little like a cornered animal, and Samara says, “Oh, we can remedy that,” and then just hands Freja across the table like she’s a side of mashed potatoes. Steve can feel a shot of adrenaline flood his system. <em>Oh shit, how do I hold her? What if I drop her? What if I squeeze her too tight? What if she doesn’t like me?</em> But then somehow he gets her settled on his lap and she twists around and holds the marigold up in one fat fist for him to sniff, and when he looks up again, Samara is smiling softly and Bucky is looking at him like he’s dying of thirst in the middle of the Sahara and Steve is a cool, green oasis.</p><p>Steve turns a little pink under Bucky’s laser-beam gaze. “I… I was afraid I was gonna drop her,” he says, and laughs self-deprecatingly.</p><p>Samara waves her hand dismissively. “Nah. If you can’t trust Captain America with your baby, well, then who <em>can</em> you trust?”</p><p>Steve freezes, feeling a little frisson of anxiety shoot through him; he tries to dissimulate, but Bucky notices and gives him a smile that Steve knows is meant to be reassuring. “You know who I am?” he asks, keeping his voice light and even.</p><p>Samara gives him a derisive look. “Of course I know who you are. Everybody in the neighborhood knows who you are. It’s just that we’re not gonna say anything about it because it’s none of our beeswax and we’re New Yorkers, so we’re too cool to acknowledge celebrities.”</p><p>“Do you,” Steve starts, then pauses; <em>in for a penny, in for a pound</em>, he thinks. “Do you know who he is?” He points in Bucky’s direction. Freja manages to snag his pointing finger out of the air and starts gnawing on it with four very sharp teeth.</p><p>Samara gets a look on her face that Steve might call cagey if he knew her better. “Well, yes and no. Maybe. You’re…” She turns to look at Bucky. “Are you… who I think you are?”</p><p>“I dunno,” Bucky says around a mouthful of ice cream with an exaggerated shrug. “Am I?”</p><p>“I mean,” Samara says, “it’s impossible for you to be who I think you are. But by that reckoning, it’s also impossible for me to be sitting in Captain America’s dining room eating ice cream in 2015. Aliens exist and they almost destroyed New York and the government was infested with Nazis until last year, so why shouldn’t Bucky Barnes be alive and well and growing beefsteak tomatoes in Flatbush?”</p><p>“Got it in one,” Bucky says, and Steve feels shocked that he’s acting so blasé about all this. They’ve never really talked about his public identity because the issue has never come up; no one has ever recognized him on the street. But now, Steve thinks that maybe it’s just that no one has ever come up and <em>said</em> that they recognized him on the street.</p><p>He feels shock and the underlying frisson of anxiety turn into a stab of panic. It’s one thing to be recognized as Bucky Barnes, but Bucky doesn’t always wear the rubbery prosthetic sleeve out of the house. What if someone looks closer at the metal arm and puts two and two together? “So,” he starts warily, “how did you figure it out?”</p><p>“My brother, Daniel, he’s also your next door neighbor, he lives on the top floor of our building, right?”</p><p>“I met him once,” Bucky interrupts. “Helped him pick up some papers that were blowing all over the street.”</p><p>“Yep, that’s him. Anyway, he’s a high school history teacher and he did his master’s thesis on the SSR and he does a whole unit on you guys every year, and he said that if you took away the three-day beard and the long hair, you were the spitting image of Bucky Barnes. So we decided that there were really only two reasons for a carbon copy of Bucky Barnes to be living with the real, live Captain America. Either you had also somehow been frozen for seventy years, or that he had some kind of a…” She stops abruptly and looks embarrassed.</p><p>Bucky grins evilly. “Some kind of a what?”</p><p>“Um.” Samara grimaces at Steve apologetically. “Some kind of a weird kink.”</p><p>Bucky guffaws around his ice cream spoon, but Steve frowns. “So, does anybody else in the neighborhood recognize him? Or do they all just think I collect guys that look exactly like my long-dead best friend?”</p><p>“Honestly, I don’t think anyone looks close enough. This is New York, remember? I’m not really in the thick of the neighborhood gossip, but as far as I can tell, everybody just thinks he’s your regular ol’ boyfriend. Some of the older ladies around here think he’s your platonic housemate, but they’re in denial.” She grins and shrugs and holds the ice cream bowl up so that she can run the spoon around the bottom, chasing the last chunk of strawberry.</p><p><em>Everyone thinks he’s my boyfriend</em>, Steve echoes in his own head. A year ago, a month ago, even, it would have sent him into a spiral of panic, rushing to dig his phone out to call Dr. Castaño because <em>everybody knows </em>and then the Avengers PR team because <em>everybody knows</em>. But now, he looks up at Bucky, who is looking at him with a steady gaze that settles over Steve like the touch of a warm hand. He can feel the weight of it pressing down on the crown of his head, soothing and protective, and he finds that he no longer cares. <em>Probably should get the PR team to put out a statement,</em> he thinks mildly, as Bucky gives him a slow wink laden with affection.</p><p>Freja, tired of being ignored on Steve’s lap, points her marigold accusingly at Bucky and yells, “aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA!” Bucky crosses his eyes, sticks out his tongue, and wiggles his metal under his chin. Freja sticks out her own tongue and makes a sound like a motorcycle engine being revved in a mud pit.</p><p>“So, I’m just gonna put this question out there because Daniel would kill me if I didn’t,” Samara says to Bucky, tentatively, “but how exactly are you here, now?” She waves her hands vaguely in the air.</p><p>“That’s classified,” Steve says immediately, and Bucky adds, “Sorry, but you need like a level one billion security clearance to even know that I exist, much less find out how I got here.”</p><p>“Actually, we might need you to sign some NDAs,” Steve says, thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. I’ll go into SHIELD tomorrow and talk to Fury.”</p><p>Samara gives a <em>whatcha-gonna-do</em> shrug and Freja wiggles back and forth in Steve’s lap and burbles untranslatable nonsense. “But anyway,” he says, “enough about us. What about you? We’ve been neighbors for a while, but, you know. We mind our own business, too.” He shrugs one shoulder.</p><p>“Well,” Samara says, “I’m a horticulturalist, by training.”</p><p>“That’s what we were talking about when you burst out the back door in all your glory,” Bucky says.</p><p>Steve fixes him with a glare and Freja shakes her fist and makes a noise like an angry tea kettle. “That’s right,” Steve whispers loudly into the top of her fluffy eiderdown head. “You yell at him all you want.”</p><p>“Right, yeah,” Samara grins. “So I complimented his tomatoes and he asked me to take a look at the lime tree, and that’s when you appeared. So, like I said, I’m a horticulturalist, but I’m taking a few years off to stay at home with Freja until she can start school. I do some freelance garden design here and there, but daycare is so expensive now that I’d just about lose money by going back to work fulltime.”</p><p>“Really?” Bucky says, incredulous. “Like, how much are we talking?”</p><p>“The average cost is sixteen thousand dollars a year, and that’s just the basics, no afterschool care, no nanny,” Samara says and shrugs.</p><p>“What the FUCK?” Bucky screeches, and Steve claps his hands over Freja’s ears.</p><p>“Bucky, watch your language!” he scolds.</p><p>“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Samara laughs. “It’s not a problem until they’re old enough to start repeating it.” After a short pause she adds, “I hope.”</p><p>Bucky is staring at the table, wide-eyed. “Sixteen thousand dollars,” he whispers.</p><p>Freja smears the marigold in her fist along the edge of the table, leaving a streak of orange pollen, and says, “Babubabubababu.”</p><p>“I concur,” Steve says solemnly.</p>
<hr/><p>They still debrief, but debriefing has moved to the bed. Now, after dinner, or after some TV, or after reading on the couch, they go upstairs and brush their teeth and strip down to their boxers. Then it’s the same routine, but instead of standing up in the hall, they lie tangled together in the bed like an octopus and its favorite rock. Depending on the day, on who is in need of more comfort, or who feels more clingy, one of them, the rock, lies face up and the other, the octopus, does what octopuses do.</p><p>That night, Bucky wants to be the octopus. They talk about Steve’s morning meeting and a charity banquet that Pepper is planning for September. Bucky talks some more about Samara and Freja. He gets really animated, and even sits up, straddling Steve’s thighs, so that he can use his hands to describe some of the ideas that Samara had given him for the garden.</p><p>“Well, maybe the Caregivers of Reckless Idiots therapy group is a good idea,” Steve says, looking up at Bucky, his fingers laced behind his head. “Samara is alone with Freja all day, and I leave you to your own devices most mornings. Maybe you should invite them over again.”</p><p>“Yeah, maybe I should,” Bucky says, and splays himself back over Steve’s big body.</p><p>They lie in silence for a few minutes, Steve trailing his fingers up and down Bucky’s back and Bucky breathing steadily into the crook of his neck.</p><p>“Steve?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Remember when I said I wanted a dog or a cat or something like that?”</p><p>“Oh yeah, of course,” Steve says. “I haven’t forgotten, you know, it just kinda got put on the back burner because I had that long mission and then we went to the Keys and then… and then I found out you loved me and couldn’t really think about anything else.” He wraps his arms around Bucky and presses a kiss to the crown on his head. “Are you still thinking about that? Clint gave me a list of shelters, actually, we could go check them out whenever you want.”</p><p>Bucky tucks his hands under Steve’s torso and rubs his face against his neck. “I didn’t think you’d forgotten. But…” He stops talking. Steve thinks maybe he’s trying to think of how to phrase something, but he just doesn’t start talking again.</p><p>After a few minutes pass, Steve says gently, “But what?”</p><p>Bucky takes a deep breath, the graceful curve of his ribcage expanding under Steve’s hands, and lets it out slowly. “But what if I said that instead of a dog or… or a cat what… what I really want is a kid?”</p><p>Steve freezes, his breath caught tight in his lungs. He has never, not in his wildest dreams or his worst nightmares, ever envisioned having this conversation with Bucky. He’s almost never thought about it at all, and definitely never this century, that’s for sure. Probably not since the last time Bucky’s little sisters had conned him into playing house with them, ninety years ago. <em>Wait, that’s not true. I thought about it once when I was talking to Bucky at SHIELD. On Thanksgiving. I had a breakdown.</em></p><p>
  <em>Okay.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay.</em>
</p><p>But here they are, now, about to have this conversation. It’s logical, it makes sense, right? It’s the next step for a lot of people, isn’t it? Step one, meet somebody you like, step two, fall in love, step three, long-term relationship, step four, have kids? They’re definitely on step three, even if they didn’t realize it until a month ago. What if he lets himself think about it, for the first time? What if?</p><p>Bucky takes Steve’s silence as his answer and rolls off of him, over to his own side of the bed. “Nevermind,” he says, flatness masquerading as a joke that just serves to hide a much deeper wound. “Just pretend I never said anything.”</p><p>Steve grabs him by the metal arm and pulls him, a little roughly, back onto his chest. “No no no, don’t be like that, you just startled me. That’s all.” He brushes Bucky’s hair off of his face and kisses his temple, his forehead, the soft curve of his ear.</p><p>“Listen. Do you remember when I came to talk to you at SHIELD on Thanksgiving last year and I freaked out all of a sudden and started crying and had to go walk up and down the hall until I calmed down?”</p><p>“Yeah?” Bucky says, hesitantly. He’s still hurt, Steve can hear it in his voice, and he wants to just push words frantically out of his mouth until he hits the right combination that makes Bucky stop sounding like that. But he needs it to make sense. He needs to be understood.</p><p>“All I told you at the time was that I had issues, but it was because I was thinking about what I could do if I quit being an Avenger, and my brain just threw at me ‘you could adopt a bunch of kids and be a stay-at-home dad’ and I had this wild, disproportionate reaction to the idea, like somebody hit me with a sock full of nickels, but the nickels were all the things that I’d been repressing since 1935.”</p><p>Bucky takes a deep breath and snuggles closer into Steve’s side. He tucks his metal hand around the back of Steve’s neck and scritches the tips of his fingers through his hair.</p><p>“I’ve never thought about having this conversation with you. Ever. I couldn’t allow myself to. Ever. When we… when we were young, before the war, I always knew that having kids wasn’t an option for me because, first, I wasn’t gonna be alive long enough to have any, and second, even if I did miraculously survive, I couldn’t, in good conscience, pass all my health problems on to some poor, innocent baby. And then, third, the little problem of how no girl wanted to get near me, which I didn’t want anyway ‘cause I was queer, and that was just… well. You know. So I knew from the start that that was never gonna be me. It didn’t matter what I wanted.”</p><p>Bucky scoots up Steve’s torso until his head is lying on Steve’s pillow. He gently turns Steve’s head to the side with his metal hand until they’re eye to eye. Bucky still doesn’t say anything, but Steve is left breathless by the depth of feeling that he sees on his face. He feels overwhelmed, again, for the first time in weeks, and he has to shut his eyes before he can continue.</p><p>“And… and then, after the serum, everything happened so fast, I barely had time to sleep, much less contemplate the nature of my existence. Peggy and I had so little time together, and I never envisioned her as the white picket fence type of gal, anyway.” Here, Bucky huffs out a little laugh. “She did get married and have kids, later, so maybe it could have happened if… But it never occurred to me, at the time.”</p><p>“And then after I woke up in the future, I just… I wasn’t a person anymore, Buck. Again, there was no reason to contemplate the nature of my existence because I didn’t really exist. Not really, you know? Not until you came back to me and gave me a reason to be a person again.”</p><p>He opens up his eyes now and looks at Bucky, who, to his surprise, is crying freely, silently, tears streaming sideways down over the bridge of his nose and making a wet spot on Steve’s pillow. “Oh sweetheart,” Steve says, and rolls all the way over onto his side so that he can take Bucky’s face between his two hands and wipe the tears away with his thumbs. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m telling you all this so you know that I don’t have a solid answer for you right now, I’m gonna need time to think about it. And we’re gonna have to talk about it a lot, and we both need some more therapy, and you need to be not legally dead, but my answer after all of that is yes, that’s probably something I’d want too.”</p><p>Bucky smiles at him, and sniffs, and his eyes are red and puffy and his nose is running, but he looks the way the first day of spring feels and Steve loves him so, so much.</p><p>“But in the meantime,” he says, dragging his palm down Bucky’s jaw, feeling the comforting rasp of his stubble, “I think we could handle a cat.”</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later they pick the first animal shelter on Clint’s list and go in with the idea of just having a look. “We’re scoping out the territory,” Steve says.</p><p>“Yeah, just shopping around,” Bucky agrees.</p><p>“Wouldn’t want to pick the first cat we see.”</p><p>“No way, we need to make sure that the one we pick is one we really click with.”</p><p>So, of course, not five minutes after they walk through the door of the cat room, Bucky has a gigantic orange-and-white tabby clutched under his chin, and he’s saying “Steve. Steve. Steve. Steve,” while Steve is trying to tell the volunteer what kind of cat they’re looking for.</p><p>“Something small, calm, good disposition, not too demanding,” he’s saying.</p><p>Finally, Bucky loses his patience and inserts himself between Steve and the volunteer. “I found him. The one I want. It’s this one. His name is Crouton.”</p><p>Steve looks at the cat, who looks back at him with a resigned expression on its face. “That’s not a cat, that’s a cocker spaniel.”</p><p>“C’mon, Steve, he can’t help it if he’s fat.”</p><p>“That cat’s not fat, Bucky. That is the Incredible Hulk of cats. That cat is an apex predator. Are you sure you want something the size of a twenty-pound bag of flour stalking around the house?”</p><p>“Closer to thirty pounds, actually,” the volunteer says over Bucky’s shoulder. “We think he might be part Maine Coon.”</p><p>“Whatever.” Bucky dismissively waves the hand not clutching the cat. “He’s perfect. Look at us, Steve, we’d squish a small cat underfoot like a bug. We need something robust, a cat who can hold his own in our household.” He hikes the cat up on his shoulder like he’s a baby to be burped and says, “Plus, his name is Crouton.”</p><p>Steve looks at Bucky and Bucky looks back, eyes wide, face open and hopeful. Steve knows he’s gonna lose this argument, if it even is an argument, if he even cares about winning or losing at all, which he doesn’t. All he really cares about is making Bucky happy.</p><p>“Okay,” he says. “Sure.” He pats the cat on the head and the cat makes a sound like a lawnmower heard through an open window on a hot summer morning. “Welcome to the family, Crouton.”</p>
<hr/><p>Crouton, fortunately, only fails one of Steve’s original criteria. He’s calm, has a good disposition, and isn’t too demanding. Unfortunately, he really is just as big as he looked in the animal shelter. Bigger, even, when he’s stretched out to his full length on the rug or the chaise longue. When he lies in the doorway, he looks like a long, fuzzy draft stopper. Bucky calls him <em>the speed bump</em>.</p><p>He turns out to have the personality of a speedbump, too. Steve and Bucky had stocked up on cat toys the first day they’d brought him home from the shelter, but he seems content to spend his time recumbent, either sleeping or watching them go about their business, idly flicking the end of his tail. He takes it upon himself to be the supervisor of the house, and can always be found lying somewhere, like the middle of the hallway, that will allow him to see both Steve and Bucky at the same time. He can be cuddly, too, but only in the bedroom where there’s air conditioning. Otherwise, in the sweltering August heat, he prefers to keep his distance.</p><p>Bucky sends a picture of Crouton stretched out on the couch to the group chat; there is, predictably, a scramble to immediately come over and meet him, and Steve has to do some verbal acrobatics to hold them all off. He hasn’t told anyone besides Natasha about him and Bucky, and he hasn’t really wanted to, either. It was something of a revelation to realize that he didn’t care if the world at large knew that he was bisexual or that he and Bucky were together. But it’s different when it’s people with names and faces and penchants for poking him until he explodes like an inflatable punching bag. He wants to live inside this lovely, peaceful bubble for a little while longer. He feels like Gollum, crouched over Bucky hissing “my precious, my preciousssss,” selfish and greedy with his love and his giddy joy.</p><p>So he makes up something about how Crouton is still skittish and shy and that they’d better wait for a little longer while he gets used to his surroundings, and it seems like everyone buys it.</p><p>“Did I handle that well?” he asks, looking up from his phone. His head is in Bucky’s lap, and he rolls over to look up at him, at the tender little pad of fat under his chin covered with the sharp, raspy scruff that Steve loves to run the backs of his knuckles over.</p><p> Bucky laughs at him, glancing down from where he’d been following the conversation on his own phone. “Not even a little bit. Thank god Nat is the one who already knows about us or she’d be halfway here already to see what the hell we’re hiding.”</p><p>Steve huffs an irritated sigh out between his lips. “We’re gonna have to tell them sometime.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know.” Bucky sets his phone down on the arm of the couch and runs his fingers through Steve’s hair. It’s getting long, long enough that when Bucky runs his fingers through it, twitches the ends before slipping his fingers back in close to the roots again, it sends a bright spark of pleasure running up and down Steve’s spine, covering his arms in a wave of goosebumps.</p><p>“I was thinking, Sam’s gonna be here next week, right? I want him to know first, or second, I guess, and then we can tell the rest of the group.” He rolls his face further in toward Bucky’s stomach so that Bucky can reach the back of his head. “It’s gonna be awkward, but I guess they’ll lose interest soon enough.”</p><p>“Maybe we can drop the bomb in the chat and then both leave the group.”</p><p>Steve laughs, and then nuzzles the soft part of Bucky’s stomach. He can feel Bucky, immediately, start to get hard underneath him.</p><p>“Are you trying to start something?” Bucky asks, his voice low and soft.</p><p>“What if I am?” Steve rolls further over onto his stomach and mouths at Bucky’s cock through his thin shorts.</p><p>“Well, then I’d say let’s go upstairs because I can’t get in the mood if Crouton is staring at me.”</p><p>Steve looks down to the foot of the couch where Crouton is lying upside down on the chaise longue, his paws crooked, regarding them thoughtfully.</p><p>“I didn’t anticipate that this was gonna be a problem when I agreed to get you a pet,” Steve says ruefully.</p><p>“Good thing cats never evolved opposable thumbs.” Bucky bites his lip and grinds his crotch up into Steve’s cheekbone. “C’mon, baby, let’s you and me get out of here and go somewhere behind a door with a doorknob and a lock.”</p>
<hr/><p>The last week in August, Sam comes to visit. Steve meets his taxi at the bottom of the steps and almost knocks him down to the sidewalk with the force of his hug. Bucky’s right behind him, extending his human hand shyly but eagerly and giving Sam a good, solid shake. Then he picks up Sam’s bags and hops up the steps and into the hall, leaving Sam and Steve to trail behind him with their arms around each other’s shoulders.</p><p>Bucky used to be the jealous type, Steve reflects later, getting all out of sorts if Steve ever made friends with anyone else, ever talked about the guys he worked with or the son of a friend of his ma’s who’d been invited over out of politeness. He was greedy with Steve’s friendship as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult; he wanted Steve and his jokes and his affections and his moods, both good and bad, all to himself.</p><p>It used to make Steve so angry, how Bucky would disappear on Friday nights at the drop of a hat and not turn up again for hours and hours, but if Steve wasn’t there drawing or reading or sleeping when he got home, he’d turn petulant and then morose. The next morning he’d give Steve the cold shoulder until Steve had had enough. Then Steve either kicked him or punched him or grabbed his coat and slammed the front door of their tiny little apartment, waiting for five minutes in the hall until his heartbeat had calmed down and he could slam back through the door again, Bucky relieved and contrite on the other side.</p><p>Steve had been telling the truth, that day in the garden, when he’d told Bucky that his old self had been exhausting, like a match that flares up all bright and burning. But even at his angriest, Steve had kept his hands cupped around the match, protecting it from the wind and the rain and letting it burn as much as it wanted, even if sometimes he held on too long and singed his fingertips.</p><p>But that was the old Bucky, just like it was the old Steve. Now, Bucky drops Sam’s bags in the hall and goes into the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “Sam, do you want iced tea or beer? We have about a hundred different kinds because Steve can never choose when we go to the grocery store.” Sam opens his mouth to say something, but Bucky keeps going, his voice muffled because he’s got his head stuck inside the refrigerator. “And are you hungry? I could make you a sandwich or something, or there’s snack things, we bought lots of cheese and crackers and stuff.”</p><p>Sam looks at Steve with an impertinent question in his eyes and Steve looks at Sam and shrugs, but he can’t keep the grin off his face. “Yeah, uh, a beer, nothing too heavy, but whatever you have, that’d be great,” Sam says. “And I guess I could eat some cheese and crackers like a fancy person. For right now, though, I’ve gotta use the ladies’ room.” He makes quick work of kicking off his shoes in the hall and dashes upstairs and into the bathroom.</p><p>Steve laughs to himself and goes into the kitchen where Bucky is pulling beer bottles and wheels of cheese out of the fridge. He goes back to washing the dishes, which is what he was doing when Sam’s taxi pulled up, and is just letting the water out of the sink when Sam comes back down the stairs and goes into the living room.</p><p>“Hey, baby,” he hears Sam say to the couch. “Come to papa.” There’s a <em>whump</em> and a creak of protesting couch innards and then he says “Steve, can you bring me a pillow? I’m gonna take a nap right now, I’ve really missed this couch.”</p><p>Steve, drying a plate with a dishcloth, sticks his head out the kitchen door and can see nothing but Sam’s legs sticking out over the arm of the couch. “Oh, uh, actually, you can take a nap in the guest bedroom, if you want. That’s where we’re gonna put you.”</p><p>Sam pushes himself up on his hands and looks over the back of the couch. “Fine by me, but where’s Bucky gonna sleep?”</p><p>At that moment, Steve jumps like he’s been goosed, and Bucky appears behind him with a plate piled high with cheese and crackers in one hand and three bottles of beer in the other. He sets them down on the table, grinning innocently, and says, “I’m gonna go take your bags up to your room, you go ahead and tuck in.”</p><p>Sam watches him walk through the living room and disappear up the stairs and then looks back at Steve, who has transformed into a big blond strawberry. He’s still rubbing the bone-dry plate with the dishcloth, looking sheepish.</p><p>“Guest bedroom,” Sam mutters to himself. He narrows his eyes. “Now wait a goddamn second. Are you…” He flaps his hand between Steve and the staircase.</p><p>Steve nods happily, the sheepish look replaced with a shy smile.</p><p>Sam jumps up and runs over to catch Steve in a bone-cracking hug. “Aww, that’s great,” he says when Steve finally stops pounding on his back. “I’m so happy that you guys finally got your shit together and saw what’s been obvious to everybody else for months.”</p><p>Steve laughs happily and then says, “Wait, months?”</p><p>“Yeah, Tony’s had a betting pool going since the end of January.”</p><p>Steve opens his mouth and takes a deep breath to begin his offended tirade, but Sam cuts him off with a roll of his eyes and a wave of his hand. “Look, man, you came into the Tower two weeks after Bucky turned himself in and he was all you could talk about. How well he was doing, how much progress he was making, every one-sided conversation recounted in detail with your face lit up like a kid at Christmas. It was like when my sister had babies all over again.”</p><p>“Oh jesus,” Steve says. He puts the plate down on the table and drapes the dishtowel over his face like a shroud. “I’m never gonna live this down.”</p><p>“Probably not, at least not where Tony’s concerned. Anyway, when exactly did you guys get together? It’s important. So we can find out who won the pool.”</p><p>“Uhhh,” Steve says, “Why do you think I’m gonna cooperate with this? I’m not sure I like being the subject of a betting pool.”</p><p>“July 12th!” Bucky yells from upstairs.</p><p>“Goddammit,” Sam says with a grimace. “Clint won. He picked two weeks on either side of your birthday, the rat bastard.”</p><p> Bucky appears in the living room doorway. “And you, Sam? What did you pick?”</p><p>“I picked the last two weeks of this year because I thought it was gonna take the token mushiness of Christmas for Steve to get his shit together. We both know he’s a born sap.” Bucky laughs and then blows Steve’s glowering face a kiss that Steve doesn’t deign to acknowledge.</p><p>“Actually, I should have picked something earlier, I should have known you were gonna get tired of him turning those big innocent blue eyes on you and going ‘oh Bucky, whatever should I do without you, my bestest best friend in all the world?’” Bucky is almost bent over double, wheezing at Sam’s damsel-in-distress falsetto. Steve is, impossibly, even more red than before. “And the blushing thing,” Sam continues, flapping a hand at Steve’s face. “Jesus christ. Saint Teresa herself would have cracked and jumped his bones before a year was gone.”</p><p>“Oh my god,” says Steve. “I hate you both. And all the other Avengers, when they find out. I quit. I’m going to live in a cabin in Montana.” He throws the dishtowel down on the dining room table and stomps into the kitchen.</p><p>“Wait, wait, wait,” Sam says, and Steve can hear the unbridled glee in his voice. “Am I the only one that knows?”</p><p>Steve comes back to stand in the kitchen doorway while Bucky waggles his hand and says, “Ehh, Nat knows, but only because she’s a superspy and it’s impossible to hide anything from her. But we swore her to secrecy.”</p><p>Sam looks elated and clasps his hands together; he looks like he’s asking a trickster god for help doing something reckless but fun. “Can I put it in the group chat? Can I? Please? Ya’ll are gonna have to tell everybody someday. Please let me do it, please?” He turns toward Steve and widens his eyes. “Steve, you didn’t get me a birthday present but I’ll let it slide if you let me put it in the group chat.”</p><p>“Your birthday’s not until September, asshole!” Steve says, hiding a smile behind a glare. Then he heaves a sigh. “What do you think, Buck?”</p><p>Bucky rolls his eyes. “I guess so. We’re gonna have to do it sometime anyway, better it come from Sam than, like, your pregnancy announcement.”</p><p>Steve squawks and Sam grimaces, but he recovers quickly and pulls out his phone. “Okay, gimme a minute. I gotta craft the perfect text.”</p><p>In the end, the pressure is too great, so he just sends a picture of his suitcase on the bed in Bucky’s old room, and says:</p><p>[Sam]: Just got in, gonna take a nap and then see what happens<br/>
[Sam]: Hmu anybody who wants to hang out while I’m here<br/>
[Tony]: Come to the Tower, I’ve got more wing prototypes for you to try out !!<br/>
[Tony]: And the offer stands if you want to stay here, I’ll put you up in luxury and you won’t have to sleep on Steve’s shitty Ikea couch<br/>
[Sam]: Oh I’m not sleeping on the couch, I got the spare bedroom<br/>
[Nat]: :)<br/>
[Bruce]: Bucky gave you his room? That’s very nice<br/>
[Nat]: LMAO<br/>
[Sam]: Don’t worry Bruce, nobody’s sleeping on the couch<br/>
[Nat]: LMFAO<br/>
[Tony]: Did Steve’s house grow a third bedroom??<br/>
[Tony]: Steve, did you get Strange to build you a pocket dimension???<br/>
[Sam]: Loololollllolololololol<br/>
[Maria]: Wait a sec, are Steve and Barnes fucking<br/>
[Steve]: MARIA!!!!!!!!!?!??!??!?!<br/>
[Clint]: LAKJHLAKJSDHLASKJDHKASJdhasj<br/>
[Bucky]: Yep<br/>
[Nat]: LMFAOOOOOOOOO<br/>
[Bruce]: Wow, I can hear Tony screaming from three floors away
</p>
<hr/><p>Steve had already taken the rest of the week off of work, so they spend a long weekend taking Sam out to eat bagels and ice cream and pizza, and Steve rents a car on Sunday to take them out to Jones Beach.</p><p>Steve always has fun with Bucky, but when they’re out of the house, it’s a quiet, private sort of fun that they guard safely in the hollow space their palms make when their hands are clasped together. But Sam, showing no respect for their private ways, takes that fun and hurls it out into the open, which is how Steve finds himself, that afternoon, waist-deep in the Atlantic, roaring like the Minotaur while two fully-grown men hang onto his arms and try to pull his head under the cold, fishy water. Sam and Bucky are weak with laughter, but it’s two against one, and they finally succeed.</p><p>That evening, while Sam is in the shower rinsing off the sand and the saltwater and Bucky is out in the garden taking advantage of the cooler evening weather to get his garden chores done, Steve goes into his somewhat-neglected studio and starts rooting around in his paints, trying to figure out what he needs to buy at the art supply store when they go into the city tomorrow. He wants—needs— to get back into painting, to finish the one sitting on the easel so that he can start on something else. But for the last month or so, he’s been focused on other things and hasn’t made the time.</p><p>He hears the water shut off and Sam come out of the bathroom. The door of the spare bedroom closes and there’s the sounds of a suitcase being unzipped and rezipped. Then after a minute, Sam comes back out again and stands in the doorway to the studio. “Jesus,” he whispers under his breath, and Steve turns around to see what he’s talking about.</p><p>Sam is staring at the painting on the easel, the one of Bucky as Millais’s <em>Ophelia</em>, but lying asleep in a bed of flowers. It’s almost, but not quite finished, and Steve just needs another day or two before he can take it off the easel and lean it up against the wall and let his mind off the leash to start thinking about something else.</p><p>“What?” he says.</p><p>“It’s just…” Sam trails off, shoots Steve an inscrutable glance, and then looks back at the painting again, as if he can’t tear his eyes away. “You can tell. It’s so obvious.”</p><p>“Tell what?”</p><p>There’s another pause, and Steve almost turns back to his paint box before Sam says, “How much you love him.”</p><p>Steve pushes himself to his feet and goes around to stand beside Sam. The canvas is big, but not huge, thirty by forty inches, only a little smaller than the original. In the center, Bucky is laying on one of his garden beds, stray bits of leggy, late-summer grass and plaited seed heads poking up in the foreground. In the background is the dark fence, but it’s mostly covered by the wide spread of the apple tree, mottled green-and-red apples pulling the gnarled branches low to the ground.</p><p>Bucky is lying in the bed where the pole beans are, but in the painting, instead, he’s surrounded by flowers, hundreds of them, both varieties that he grows and ones that Steve has only ever seen in books. Agapanthus, narcissus, nigella. Violets, daisies, campanula. There are wild roses and tea roses and damask roses, and next to his hip, a purple speckled orchid. His right hand clutches a bouquet of French marigolds, all long stems and feathery foliage; his left hand is open and relaxed in sleep, but across his metal palm lies a raceme of bleeding heart. His head is laying on the great velvet center of a sunflower, its petals spread wide around his dark, shining hair like a crown.</p><p>Flowers spill out from under his body and tumble down the sides of the bed. They spring up on the other side of him and drip loose petals everywhere, covering the green summer grass with a snowfall of pink and white and red and yellow and blue and purple and orange.</p><p>Bucky himself, eyes closed, mouth slack and creamy pink, looks like a soul at rest, the great golden peacefulness of him shining out through his face. Steve looks at the painting again with fresh eyes, seeing it from Sam’s perspective, and he’s right. It’s obvious.</p><p>He starts to feel the weight of it, as if he’s not the one who is looking at Bucky, but rather the one being perceived. He turns away from the easel and steps forward to look out the window, to give himself a break and compose his face before he has to turn back and meet Sam’s eye again. But the view out the window is almost worse.</p><p>Bucky is sitting cross-legged in the grass beside the zucchini and pumpkins. His back is bent, his hands thrust into the jungle of leaves manipulating something; Steve can’t tell what. Over his head arches one giant leaf like the gourd that shadowed Jonah, and Steve can hear him whistling through his teeth. He concentrates for a moment and finally makes out a snatch of song; “Here comes the sun,” Bucky sings, “doo doo doo doo.”</p><p>“I had no idea you were so talented. This is really good, Steve,” Sam finally says from behind him.</p><p>Steve can’t tear his eyes away from the window, not yet, not when Bucky dislodges a giant zucchini from the interior of the bed and pulls it out with a triumphant little fist pump. Then, knowing, somehow, that he’s being watched, he turns and looks straight up at the studio window, looks straight at Steve standing there and looking back at him. He grins, quick and lovely, and waggles the zucchini toward the window as Steve gives him a silly little wave and a thumbs-up.</p><p>And then, not bothering with false modesty, knowing he’s talking about two different things at once, he turns back to Sam and says, “Yep, it really is.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>A peek behind the scenes: Crouton is modeled after my own cat who is, yes, actually <a href="https://twitter.com/Hark_Bananas/status/1294365661200883714?s=20">that big</a>. (Unfortunately, his name is not really Crouton.)</p><p>Steve's painting is after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophelia_(painting)#/media/File:John_Everett_Millais_-_Ophelia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Millais's <em>Ophelia</em></a>, and as my beta commented, "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, tone it down, Rogers."</p><p>DISCLAIMER: I know NOTHING about the language of flowers and I could not be arsed doing the research, but I would love for anyone who does know that stuff to tell me exactly how hilariously wrong I got it in the comments. Only my heavy-handed orchid placement could be called anything like deliberate *waggles eyebrows*</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. September</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Soundtrack for this chapter: <a href="https://youtu.be/sI3mV0qL8lY">Ella Fitzgerald - Ev'rything I've Got</a>.</p>
<p>CW: Brief mention of suicide</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the first day of September, Steve is eating a breakfast burrito and reading the paper when his phone rings. The caller ID reads <em>Fury</em>. Steve moves the wad of half-chewed burrito into his cheek and picks up the phone. “’Lo?”</p>
<p>“Cap, I need to see you in my office at ten o’clock.” Fury sounds the same as he always does on the phone—his flat, uninflected voice supremely unimpressed by whatever’s in his line of sight.</p>
<p>Steve frowns. “I’ve got training, but I can stop by after.”</p>
<p>“Nope, you’ve got me at ten o’clock. You can train after.” Fury disconnects, but Steve stays with the phone pressed to his ear for another moment before he realizes. He misses the <em>click</em> that accompanied the end of a call on the old phones. Nowadays, you just have to listen carefully for the static to cut out. “Okay,” he says into the silence. “Sure, why not?”</p>
<p>“Something wrong?” Bucky asks from his left elbow, where he’s eating his own burrito and reading <em>A Wizard of Earthsea.</em></p>
<p>“I don’t think so. I hope not. That was Fury, telling me to cancel my plans and hop down to his office. You know how he is.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I know he’s an asshole,” Bucky snickers, unbothered by Steve’s mild sense of foreboding. “Give him my regards.”</p>
<p>Steve stands up and folds the paper, then cups his hand around Bucky’s face and kisses him on the temple. “Will do. Love you.”</p>
<p>Bucky turns his scratchy face into Steve’s palm and presses a kiss there in return. “Love you, too.”</p>
<p>When he gets to Fury’s floor in the SHIELD building, he doesn’t have to wait in the anteroom for long before the door opens and a young, terrified-looking SHIELD agent rushes out in tears. Steve walks in and shuts the door behind him, then sits down in the uncomfortable chrome-and-leather chair in front of Fury’s desk.</p>
<p>He puts on his bland, mildly-interested face. “You rang?”</p>
<p>“Well, Cap,” Fury says, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation. “It’s the beginning of the new school year, figured we should have a little chat, catch up a bit.”</p>
<p>Steve cocks an eyebrow. “You operate on the school calendar? I didn’t think you had kids, Nick.”</p>
<p>“I don’t, but I’m the surrogate daddy of so many idiot baby agents that I thought going back to a schedule they’re familiar with might smooth things over a bit.” Fury purses his lips, looking thoroughly irritated, and Steve bites back a grin. It’s always a treat to see Fury angry at somebody else. “But enough about me,” he goes on, “I called you here because I want to talk about Barnes.”</p>
<p>All of Steve’s amusement disappears in an instant, like the air inside a burst balloon. “What about him?” he says, just this side of coldly.</p>
<p>“How’s he doing?”</p>
<p>“Fine.”</p>
<p>“Mmhmm. Fine.” Fury leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers. “You’re sure he’s not doing maybe a little more than fine?”</p>
<p>Steve laces his fingers in his lap and squeezes his hands together, his knuckles blanching, and looks past Fury, out the window to his right. They’re only on the tenth floor, but he can’t see any other buildings from where he’s sitting. The sky is cloudless, a perfect end-of-summer blue. He knows it’s still hot outside, but the air conditioning in the building is turned down as low as it will go, and he has to suppress a shiver. <em>Does Fury know? He’s gotta know. That was him telling me he knows.</em> “Just tell me what you want.”</p>
<p>“I want Barnes to come back for the testing that he refused to do when he was our guest here last year. And, pending a psych eval, I want to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”</p>
<p>“<em>The Godfather</em> isn’t a good look on you, Nick,” Steve says.</p>
<p>Fury smirks. “Don’t get jumpy.” He sits forward in his chair and leans over the desk. “He’s a soldier, Cap. He’s been a soldier for the last seventy-five years. So maybe he’s taken a little time off, but soldiering is what he knows. He’s a very valuable…” Steve can see him visibly bite back the word <em>asset</em>. He grinds his teeth, knowing that Fury can see the muscle jumping in his jaw.</p>
<p>“He has some very valuable skills, Cap,” Fury continues after a moment’s awkward silence, “and he would be an invaluable resource for SHIELD, either as one of our operatives or as an Avenger.”</p>
<p>Steve looks down at his hands, still clenched tightly in his lap. He can’t refuse on Bucky’s behalf, even though he wants to, even though he thinks that that’s what Bucky would want. So he says, “Alright, I’ll talk to him. But there’s something I want, too.”</p>
<p>“And what would that be, Cap?”</p>
<p>It irritates him that Fury insists on calling him Cap, on repeating the title far more often than the flow of the conversation warrants. From anyone else, it would be an acknowledgement of rank, possibly an honorific, if a little informal, but from Fury, it sounds like he’s being put in his place, reminded of who he really is. Steve takes a breath and holds it for a second, not long enough to be noticeable but long enough to soothe his anger a little. “I want SHIELD to get off its ass and get his death certificate rescinded. He deserves to be a person in the eyes of the law.”</p>
<p>Fury gives him a long, considering look. “Does he?”</p>
<p>Steve narrows his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”</p>
<p>“I mean, Cap, we haven’t taken care of the death certificate yet because if James Buchanan Barnes is alive and well today, and if James Buchanan Barnes is the former Winter Soldier, then who’s to say that James Buchanan Barnes is not legally responsible for all of the crimes that the Winter Soldier committed?”</p>
<p>Steve is hit by a sudden wave of nausea. He’s been afraid this whole time that Bucky would be recognized on the street as the guy in the blurry news footage from the fight on the bridge, but he’d only thought that people might be angry, or scared. He’d never thought about the legal consequences, and now that seems impossibly naïve.</p>
<p>“He was brainwashed, he was a prisoner of war,” he starts, but Fury cuts him off with a look that, from him, passes as gentle.</p>
<p>“I know that,” he says. “You know that. But in order for the American public to know that, it would have to come to trial. Is that something you want?”</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Steve whispers, stricken, wondering how he’s going to break this to Bucky. “No.”</p>
<p>“Then trust me when I say that it’s better for everyone if James Buchanan Barnes stays good and dead.”</p>
<p>Steve rubs his hand over his forehead, smoothing out the lines he can feel creasing it up. He feels weary, all of a sudden, achingly tired in a way that a hot bath and a long nap won’t cure. “Okay. I understand. But there must be another solution. He can’t be a non-person forever.”</p>
<p>Fury leans back in his chair again and looks at Steve smugly. “You leave that up to me, Cap. I’ve got a few ideas.”</p><hr/>
<p>When he gets home that afternoon, Bucky is lying on the couch, his head on the arm nearest the door, still reading, but now he's moved on to <em>The Tombs of Atuan</em>. Steve almost trips over Crouton doing his speed bump thing in the hallway because he’s so focused on Bucky that he doesn’t look where he’s putting his feet. When Bucky hears him stumble and curse, he tilts his head backward over the arm of the couch and looks at Steve upside down. But even from that angle, he must be able to tell that something is wrong because he sits up abruptly and says, “Stevie, what’s the matter?”</p>
<p>Steve lets himself flump down heavily on the couch and throws his legs over Bucky’s lap. “Fury wanted to talk about you.”</p>
<p>Bucky pulls a black hair elastic off his wrist and uses it to mark his place before setting his book down on the coffee table. Then he starts running his fingers lightly up and down Steve’s shins. “Ah. And what did he say?”</p>
<p>“Well, first, that they want you to go back and do some tests at SHIELD. I guess all the ones that you refused the first time around. He didn’t specify what kind of tests he was talking about, but I guess you could ask Dr. Zaidi, she’d know.”</p>
<p>Bucky hums vaguely. “And second?”</p>
<p>“Second...” Steve can’t make himself continue. He knows, viscerally, but without ever having thought about it, that he doesn’t want Bucky to go back to the fight, to pick up a gun, to turn back into what he was before, or some version of it. He doesn’t want Bucky to be SHIELD’s Winter Soldier, Fury’s coup; he doesn’t even want him to be Sergeant Barnes, his right-hand man. He wants Bucky to grow tomatoes and make pies and be reading science fiction on the couch when he comes home. He wants him to be soft, to be tender, to be all of the things he couldn’t be since before the war. Hell, the 1930s weren’t very nice to boys who didn’t want to grow up to be hardass men; maybe Bucky hasn’t really been able to be soft since he was in short pants.</p>
<p>Steve comes back to himself because Bucky leans over and grabs him by the hips, tugging him into his lap. “I think I’m the one that should be holding you,” Steve says.</p>
<p>“Just shut up and let me do it,” Bucky murmurs in his ear.</p>
<p>So Steve curls up and tucks his head under Bucky’s chin. “Anyway. He also wanted to talk to me because he wants you to go back. He wants you to fight again.” He can feel his body tensing up, even though Bucky is stroking a soothing hand down his flank. “He wants you to be SHIELD’s fucking <em>asset</em>,” he bites out, bitterly.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Bucky says, his voice soft and resigned. “I figured this day was gonna come. You don’t let a weapon like me sit around gathering dust.”</p>
<p>It pains Steve that Bucky’s already thought about this, but it rips the wound right open when he realizes that Bucky seems to think that once an asset, always an asset. Steve sits up straight and cups Bucky’s face in his hands. “You’re not a fucking weapon. You’re a gardener, a baker, a reader, a friend. You’re a lover.” He has to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Even if you have the potential to be a weapon, that doesn’t mean that you are, or have to be.”</p>
<p>Bucky’s eyes are shining, but he doesn’t cry. “And what are you, Steve? You’re an artist, a lover, a friend. You’re also a fighter. An Avenger. You’re a weapon, too. And, and…” he pauses, swallows audibly. “And maybe I don’t wanna fight again. But if I do, then at least I can watch your back, like I used to. I know you’ve got a great team, but they’re not me. It’s really hard to watch you leave and know I’m not there to protect you, you know.”</p>
<p>Steve can’t look at him anymore if he wants to keep himself under control. He leans back into Bucky’s warm body and wraps his arms around his neck like a baby monkey. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you to fight. I don’t want you to feel obligated to fight because of me. So.” He pauses, not sure how to say the next part. Bucky waits patiently, stroking down his back firmly and evenly. “That night, when you told me that you wanted to have a kid. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about this, but it was when I really decided. I’m gonna quit. I’m gonna leave the Avengers. It used to be what kept me going, it was the only thing I had, really, but now I’m tired of it. I’m tired of it being something that’s at odds with the life we have.”</p>
<p>Bucky hugs him hard, almost to the point of hurting him. “Oh, Steve,” he whispers.</p>
<p>Steve squeezes him back just as hard. “I mean, it makes sense, right? Everybody else our age has been retired for thirty years.”</p>
<p>Bucky huffs a wet laugh into Steve’s hair. “Yeah. But do you think they’re gonna let us go?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Steve says. “I think we’re gonna need to wait for a while. I asked Fury while I was there about getting your death certificate rescinded, and he basically told me that they’re not gonna do it because it would open you up to legal consequences. Of the Winter Soldier stuff.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Bucky says, very quiet and small.</p>
<p>“But he said that they’re working on something else, though he didn’t tell me what. So, I think we need to wait until I figure out what’s going on there, whether they’re gonna give you a new identity or what.” Steve hooks his fingers into the collar of Bucky’s shirt and rubs the thin skin over his collarbone, soft and warm. “I think we should talk to Nat about it. She’s got ears and eyes everywhere, I’m sure she knows more than Fury wants to tell me. And I really want her to know that I’m thinking about leaving the Avengers, too.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.” They sit in silence for a long while, each subsumed in his own thoughts. Then Bucky says, “So, if you get out, what do you want to do?”</p>
<p>“I dunno. I’ve thought about it before, but not much. I really liked the beginning of this year, those three months I had of leave where I didn’t have to do anything except whatever I wanted. I mean, I think I’d get bored with years and years of free time, so I’m going to have to think of something, but maybe it’d be nice just to be free.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, Stevie,” Bucky says, and he sounds dreamy, as if he’s already spinning out the colorful thread of the rest of their lives. “I know what you mean.”</p><hr/>
<p>A couple of days later, Steve catches Natasha by herself when she’s coming out of the gym showers. She stops in front of her locker, still toweling her hair, when he runs up and says, “Hey, I need to talk to you about a thing.”</p>
<p>She narrows her eyes and searches his face for a moment before she says, “Okay, about what?”</p>
<p>“Nothing serious, nothing urgent, but”—he lowers his voice to a whisper—“I don’t really want to talk about it here.” He straightens up and clears his throat, a little embarrassed as his terrible subterfuge. “So, you, uh, wanna come over for dinner? Bucky was talking about making something Russian called… var… nuh… kee?”</p>
<p>“<em>Vareniki?</em>” Natasha gets a look in her eyes, something greedy and dragon-like that makes Steve take an involuntary step back.</p>
<p>“Uh, something like a dumpling filled with potatoes? I think?” he says, successfully keeping the squeak out of his voice.</p>
<p>Natasha stalks forward and he stumbles backward until she has him pressed up against the lockers. She says, low and dangerous, “Yes, I will come over for dinner, but Steve, if you’re lying to me about the vareniki, I will make you regret it.”</p>
<p>He swallows audibly. “Okay, great, I think it’s kind of a process, so maybe tomorrow? That’ll give him enough time.”</p>
<p>“Sure, thanks.” Natasha gives him a smile like a serrated hunting knife and walks around him and out the gym doors. He lets out a sigh of relief and pulls out his phone.</p>
<p>[Steve]: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh<br/>
[Bucky]: What’d you do now<br/>
[Steve]: I invited Nat for dinner<br/>
[Bucky]: Ok?<br/>
[Steve]: I told her you’d make those Russian dumpling things<br/>
[Bucky]: Tonight???????????<br/>
[Bucky]: skhdflkjdhflaksjhdas<br/>
[Steve]: No, tomorrow, I said you’d need some time<br/>
[Bucky]: NO SHIT<br/>
[Bucky]: But tomorrow night is ok I guess<br/>
[Steve]: No pressure but she said that if there were no dumplings she was gonna make me regret it<br/>
[Bucky]: FUCK<br/>
[Bucky]: Ok I’m gonna need to practice, do you mind eating them two nights in a row<br/>
[Steve]: Yeah, I’d eat them five days a week<br/>
[Steve]: But you don’t need to practice, you’ve only made them once but they were delicious<br/>
[Bucky]: No offense but it’s gonna be a little harder to impress Nat than you<br/>
[Bucky]: You think colcannon is haute cuisine<br/>
[Bucky]: Nat is RUSSIAN<br/>
[Steve]: What are you implying about colcannon??<br/>
[Bucky]: Not a damn thing<br/>
</p><hr/>
<p>The next night, they’re sitting at the table around a platter piled high with plump, glossy dumplings and fried onions. Bucky and Steve are both sitting tense and still, Bucky hunched over with his hands clasped on top of his plate like he’s the subject of an interrogation. Steve is conscious, all of a sudden, that he’s been holding his breath, and he tries to let it out as subtly as possible. They watch as Natasha cuts the corner off of a dumpling with her fork before swiping it through the fried onions and popping it in her mouth. She chews for a moment, her face thoughtful, before she looks at both of them staring at her like they’re two Grandmasters and she’s a king in check. Her mouth quirks up at the sides before she presses her lips together to suppress a broader smile. “Don’t look so scared, boys, this is very respectable vareniki.” Bucky huffs out a breath with an exaggerated <em>whew</em> and Steve lets out a bark of laughter that squeaks with residual nervousness.</p>
<p>After they’ve taken the dirty plates out to the kitchen and put a healthy serving of dumplings in a recycled takeaway box for Natasha to carry back to the Tower, they sit down in the living room. Natasha is sideways in the armchair with her legs over the arm, Steve is slouched on the chaise longue with his feet dangling over the end, and Bucky is sitting cross-legged pressed up against Steve’s left side.</p>
<p>“Alright, Steve, what did you want to talk to me about?” Natasha says. “I am full of carbohydrates and in a benevolent mood, so let’s hear it.” She waves her hand regally in their direction.</p>
<p>Steve looks at Bucky. “Your thing first or my thing first?”</p>
<p>“Maybe… my thing first,” he says, chewing on his bottom lip. “‘Cause your thing is because of my thing, if you know what I mean.”</p>
<p>Steve nods and looks back up at Natasha, who is watching them impassively. “Okay. So, Fury called me in. To talk about Bucky.” Her expression doesn’t change, so he says, “Wait a minute. Do you know all this already?”</p>
<p>“Probably,” she says with a self-satisfied smile. “But tell me anyway.”</p>
<p>“Well, he wanted to know how he was doing, and told me that they want him to come back in for testing that he didn’t do when they were holding him. Refused to do, actually,” he says, feeling a little rush of pride as he glances at Bucky out of the corner of his eye. Bucky has his hands clasped in his lap and is staring at the lamp-lit street outside of the darkened windows. He doesn’t look nervous, which is good, but he doesn’t look like he’s paying much attention, either, which Steve knows means that he’s hiding some private emotion.</p>
<p>“And then he said that, pending a psych eval, he wants to get Bucky back in the field. Actually, he said he’d make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”</p>
<p>Natasha snorts. “You wouldn’t think to look at him that Nick had such a flair for melodrama.”</p>
<p>Steve shrugs. “He doesn’t want to go back into the field. But Fury was pretty insistent, so I said I’d talk to Bucky about it and get back to him, but I haven’t yet. Gotten back to Fury, I mean.”</p>
<p>Natasha holds up a hand. “Hang on a minute, Steve.” She looks at Bucky and he swivels around to face her, putting his back up against Steve’s side. Steve extracts his arm from between them and slings it over the back of the couch, resting his hand on Bucky’s bent knee.</p>
<p>“Now, Steve thinks you don’t want to go back into the field, but I want to know what you think.”</p>
<p>“He’s right,” Bucky says with no hesitation. “I’m done fighting. I don’t want to pick up a gun for combat, ever again. I would do it, though, if it meant that I could be the one watching Steve’s back.” He turns his head and meets Steve’s eye. “But… but I’m not sure that’s necessary. Anyway, the important thing is that I’m out of the game and I don’t want back in. I don’t want to be SHIELD’s asset.”</p>
<p>Natasha nods, her expression somehow a mixture of sympathetic and shrewd. Her complete control over her face never ceases to amaze Steve, who is so transparent that he might as well take out a full-page advertisement in <em>The New York Times</em> each time he has an emotion.</p>
<p>“So, lemme guess,” she says, shooting Steve a look, and he knows that she’s caught him puzzling over her face, “you want to know how serious Nick is about bringing Bucky into the fold and what you can do about it. Or what I can do about it.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, mostly,” Steve answers, “but there’s also the issue of Buck’s, uh, identity. He’s still legally dead, you know.”</p>
<p>“Congratulations,” Natasha says, inclining her head toward Bucky, who snorts.</p>
<p>“Fury gave me to believe,” Steve continues, “that he was gonna pull some strings or something and get him a legal identity, although not tied to the James Buchanan Barnes who was born in 1917.”</p>
<p>“Not tied to the Winter Soldier, you mean,” Natasha says, and Bucky hugs his knees a little tighter to his chest.</p>
<p>“Exactly. But I’m afraid if we let on that Bucky has no intention of joining SHIELD, or even the Avengers, that he’s gonna hold that clean slate over our heads until we agree.”</p>
<p>Natasha nods slowly, her face impassive. Her eyes flick between the two of them, at Bucky huddled into Steve’s side and Steve with his arm around him protectively. “Bucky…” she starts, then looks between them again, this time with an undefinable glint in her eye. “Can I talk to you alone?”</p>
<p>Steve can feel himself bristling automatically, but he forces himself to breathe, in and out, and tamp it down. <em>This is Nat. I trust her,</em> he tells himself.<em> She’s here because I trust her.</em> He gives Bucky’s knee a squeeze and says, “Okay, I’m gonna go for a walk, then. We need milk, so I’ll go to the bodega. Is twenty minutes okay?”</p>
<p>“More than enough,” Natasha says, and he stands up to leave, but not before Bucky puts a hand on his thigh to keep him in place and leans over to give him a short, sweet kiss.</p>
<p>Twenty minutes later, he comes back with two gallons of milk and finds Bucky and Natasha in the kitchen drinking tea. There’s a third cup steaming gently on the counter, and Bucky spoons a dollop of honey into it while Steve is putting the milk in the fridge. He hands the cup to Steve, who leans against the closed refrigerator door and says, “Everything okay?”</p>
<p>Natasha, sitting on the countertop, smiles warmly at him. “You know I trust you, Steve. But I needed to hear it from Bucky himself. I know you would never force him to make a choice that he didn’t want, but I also know that it might be difficult for him to separate out the thing he wants from the thing he wants to do because it pleases you.”</p>
<p>Steve feels his blood run a little cold, and he glances at Bucky, who looks engrossed in the steam curling skyward from his own cup of tea. “You mean, because of…” He can’t bring himself to say <em>the brainwashing and the torture</em>, but Natasha hears the words that are caught in his throat.</p>
<p>“A little,” she says, “but mostly because he loves you.” Steve feels warm and cold all at the same time, but then Bucky gently kicks him in the ankle with his bare foot, and when Steve looks over, he purses his lips in a silent kiss.</p>
<p>Natasha takes a sip of her tea and continues, “But I’m satisfied now that this is what he wants. So, I want to help you. Fury has already asked me for a little help with constructing your new… identity. It’ll be easy to keep an eye on the project and make sure you end up reborn as someone you actually don’t mind being. If you catch my drift.”</p>
<p>Bucky shrugs a little, and Steve says, “Not exactly, but you know that we trust you. I trust you with my life. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got carte blanche.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, what he said,” Bucky says, jerking his thumb toward Steve.</p>
<p>“Thanks for the vote of confidence, boys,” Natasha says, grinning into her cup of tea. “Now there’s one other thing we need to talk about, and that’s whatever ‘your thing’ is, Steve.”</p>
<p>Steve looks at Bucky and Bucky looks back, giving him a small, encouraging nod. He moves down the counter to stand next to Bucky, shoulder against shoulder, and draws no small comfort from the way that Bucky presses back against him. He’s nervous, and doesn’t know what to expect.</p>
<p>“I…” he starts, then stops to take a deep breath. “I want to quit. Leave the Avengers.” He can’t make himself look Natasha in the face. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, that she puts her tea down on the counter, and he forces himself to say his piece before she interrupts him. “I’ve been fighting for a really long time, too, not like Bucky, of course, but I’m tired of it. The anger, the drive, it’s not there. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to walk out the door for a mission and not know when I’m gonna come back. Or if I’m gonna come back at all. It’s just…” He has to pause; his heart is in his throat. It’s one thing to talk about this with Bucky, which feels like nothing more than talking to his own other self, but it’s another thing entirely to talk about it with Natasha, his teammate, the person outside of Bucky he relies on and whose opinion he values the most.</p>
<p>“I’m old, Nat.” He risks a glance at her, and the expression on her face, open and full of understanding, lances right through him. He has to clench his fingers, white-knuckled, around the lip of the granite countertop so that he doesn’t burst into tears. He feels Bucky’s human hand come up to rest between his shoulder blades, and that almost makes it worse. “It used to be that fighting was the thing I had to live for, it was what made me tick, but not anymore. Now I’ve got something else, something that’s more important to me than anything else, even saving the world. I mean…”—he straightens up and clears the tears out of his throat—“I mean, if the world really needed to be saved, I’d be there in a heartbeat. We both would, I think.” Bucky’s nodding his head off to the side. “But I’m done with all the rest. I want to retire.”</p>
<p>He looks up, his stomach churning, thinking, <em>Okay, I’ve said my piece, now do your worst</em>, but Natasha jumps gracefully off the counter and walks over to him, wraps her arms around his chest and squeezes him hard.</p>
<p>“Good for you, Steve,” she says, her voice warm and muffled in his jacket. “Good for you. It’s time you were a little selfish, for once in your fucking life.”</p>
<p>Steve feels his lip wobble and, figuring that he’s got implicit permission, he wraps his arms around her shoulders and gives her a short, sharp hug in return. When he lets her go, she steps back and turns toward where her mug is sitting abandoned on the counter, but Bucky says plaintively, “What about me?” So she gives him a soft, amused smile and squeezes him, too.</p>
<p>Then she hops back up on the counter and takes a sip of her lukewarm tea.</p>
<p>“Give me a little time before you hand in your resignation, Steve. I can start to move some things along behind the scenes so that it’ll be easier to get what you want when you go to talk to Fury. Okay?”</p>
<p>Steve nods, feeling a warm wave of gratitude wash over him. “Thanks, Nat.”</p>
<p>She quirks a shoulder up and hides a smile behind her mug. “So, what are you guys gonna do once you’re free?”</p>
<p>Steve looks over at Bucky, who is grinning back at him, as bright as the morning sun bursting over the horizon. “I dunno,” he says, feeling his own smile taking over his face. “Anything we want to, I guess.”</p><hr/>
<p>It becomes a running joke between the two of them, half in jest, but half serious. One day they go to the library to rotate out their piles of books, but Bucky gets sucked into the graphic novels and Steve sits down with a year’s worth of National Geographic and they end up spending the whole afternoon there. Half of Flatbush’s adult population seems to have had the same idea and they’ve brought all of Flatbush’s children with them, but the reading room on the opposite side of the library from the children’s room is blessedly quiet, if crowded.</p>
<p>As they’re standing in the check-out line with their armfuls of books, Bucky elbows Steve and says, under his breath, “Hey, maybe we could be librarians.”</p>
<p>Steve cocks an eyebrow and gives Bucky a sidelong smirk, but to his surprise, he looks entirely serious, his face open and thoughtful. “Well,” says Steve, considering it, “it would be nice to hang around with books all day, but we’d also have to deal with the public.” He grimaces in spite of himself.</p>
<p>“Hmm, you’re right. But maybe there are library jobs that aren’t public-facing. And there are other libraries, too, like museum libraries, where you don’t have to deal with people going, ‘Hey wait, aren’t you’”—he lowers his voice to a whisper and says, all hush-hush—“’Captain America?‘”</p>
<p>When they get to the desk, Bucky gives the librarian checking them out his most charming grin and asks, “So what exactly would two nice guys like us have to do to get a job in a place like this?”</p>
<p>She gets a little flustered under the weight of his brilliant smile but says, “Well, everybody’s got a different path, but I studied history in undergrad and then got my master’s in library science from Columbia.”</p>
<p>Bucky looks taken aback. Steve himself feels a little shocked. “A master’s in library science from Columbia,” he whispers. And then, a little louder, “To work in the public library?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” she says, preening a little. “It’s a pretty competitive field, nowadays. If you want to work in any big city, or in a more prestigious library, like one attached to a college or museum, you definitely need a master’s degree.”</p>
<p>“Wow,” Bucky says sincerely, and Steve agrees.</p>
<p>The book scanner beep-beeps a few more times before the librarian says, “Why do you ask? Are you guys interested in becoming librarians?”</p>
<p>“Well, I was,” Bucky says, with an awkward laugh. “But considering I never even finished high school I think I’m a little too far behind on my studies. This guy”—he jerks his thumb at Steve—“has two years of art school under his belt, but I can’t see him going back to all that. He’s not much of an intellectual.”</p>
<p>“Hey!” Steve says, but without any heat. He can’t argue with that.</p>
<p>“You could always volunteer,” the librarian says. She pulls a sheet of paper out from under the desk and sets it on top of their towers of books. “This is a run-down of our volunteer opportunities. If you decide there’s something you’d like to do, you can send us an email to set up an appointment with the volunteer coordinator.”</p>
<p>Bucky carefully folds the piece of paper in half and sticks it in one of his books. “Thanks, we’ll look into it,” he says, and she gives him a happy smile as they pick up their stacks and make their way out the door.</p>
<p>They walk home in silence, both lost in thought. They’re almost at their stoop when Bucky says, “Jesus, a master’s from Columbia to work at the library.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Steve says. “Maybe we should think about something a little more lowbrow.”</p>
<p>“Gonna have to be nobrow for the likes of us,” Bucky says with a grin, and Steve laughs. “Yep, we’re just two unsophisticated punks from Brooklyn.”</p><hr/>
<p>They find, much to their surprise, that all of the nobrow jobs nowadays require an unprecedented level of schooling or experience. Marisa, who runs the bakery, studied at the Culinary Institute of America and her business partner, a tiny woman named Thérèse who they hardly ever see out of the back room, apprenticed at Chez Panisse. Neither Bucky nor Steve know what Chez Panisse is, but it sounds suitably high-class and Marisa looks so proud when she tells them that they are impressed and daunted in equal measures.</p>
<p>Cerise, at the nursery, studied botany. When she and her best friend decided to start the nursery, she took night classes for a few years and got a master’s degree in horticulture. “This was way back in the stone age,” she tells Bucky conspiratorially; the stone age turns out to have been the 1970s. Bucky tells Steve and they have a good laugh about that, but Steve is secretly relieved because it means that Cerise just thinks that Bucky’s some nondescript Brooklyn boy in his late twenties with a green thumb.</p>
<p>Even Chus, at the bodega, has a two-year degree in business management and spent twenty years in North Carolina managing her ex-husband’s accountancy firm before getting divorced and moving back to New York to be with her family.</p>
<p>“Seems like everybody nowadays has had career goals since they were five,” Bucky says later. “Maybe you’re just gonna have to be an Avenger forever.” He laughs a little, like he’s joking, but Steve knows his face as well as his own—better, probably—and he knows what well-hidden worry looks like on Bucky.</p>
<p>They’re eating dinner, pasta with sausage and roasted red peppers from the garden. Steve puts his fork down and wipes his mouth with the napkin before taking Bucky’s hand and lacing their fingers together. “No, I won’t. You’re forgetting that I’ve got money, sweetheart. One of Tony’s army of accountants invests it for me, and if we tightened our belts, we could live off the dividends forever. Actually, we’re probably under the limit, now. It’s not like we spend a lot of money on anything besides food. And I bought the house with cash, so we don’t even have a mortgage.”</p>
<p>Bucky looks relieved. “That’s… yeah. That’s good to know. I guess I had to think about money when I was on the run, but I haven’t had to manage it since… since before. Since the last time we lived together, I suppose.” He gives Steve a sweet smile and squeezes his hand. “But you’re gonna have to do something with yourself, you know. Personally, I could live like this forever. I actually really like being a housewife.” Steve opens his mouth but Bucky barrels on before he can get out his token protest. “I mean it, Steve. That’s not a put-down, you know. My ma was a housewife. Samara’s kind of moonlighting as a part-time housewife. Why do you think rich people pay so much for housekeepers and gardeners and private chefs? ‘Cause all of that work costs good money if you have to hire someone else to do it. Housewives work hard, pal.”</p>
<p>Steve is a little surprised, but only at Bucky’s vehemence; he has a point. “But… why not househusband? Or, I dunno, houseboyfriend, seeing as we’re not married?”</p>
<p>“Solidarity, Steve.” Bucky squeezes his hand again and then lets go in order to shovel another forkful of pasta into his mouth.</p>
<p>Steve looks at him thoughtfully, his own fork hovering over his plate. Bucky chews and swallows and takes another bite before he realizes that Steve isn’t eating. “What’re you looking at me for?” he says, a little garbled. “Got something on my face?”</p>
<p>“You telling me I can’t look at my guy a little?” Steve feels his face go soft.</p>
<p>Bucky cocks an eyebrow. “I know I don’t look my best when I’m stuffing my face, although,”—he waves his fork at Steve teasingly—“it’s true that in other situations you really like it when I’ve got my mouth stuffed full of…”</p>
<p>Steve interrupts him, “Do you wanna get married?”</p>
<p>Bucky’s jaw drops and a little piece of chewed-up sausage falls out on his plate. “Oh shit,” he says, and hastily wipes his mouth with his napkin. Then he sets it back down in his lap, smoothing it over his thighs, and clears his throat. “Are you… is this a proposal?”</p>
<p>“No, no! I mean, not unless you want it to be. I was just putting the idea out there.”</p>
<p>Bucky narrows his eyes and picks up his fork again. “Fine time you pick, when I’ve got my mouth full of food. Shouldn’t this be more, like, debriefing stuff?”</p>
<p>“Sure, we can talk more about it tonight. It’s just that I said you’d be a houseboyfriend ‘cause we’re not married, and then I thought, why aren’t we married, anyway?”</p>
<p>Bucky looks at him incredulously. “Well, maybe because we’ve only been together a couple of months? I mean, that’s a little impulsive even for Steve ‘On Va Voir' Rogers.”</p>
<p>Steve bursts out into a great peal of laughter; he can’t help himself. “I can’t believe Nat told you that.”</p>
<p>Bucky shrugs, one side of his mouth quirked up, and takes another bite of pasta.</p>
<p>“Really, though,” Steve says, picking his fork up again. “We’ve only been making time since July, but I’m pretty sure we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t admit that we’ve been together in most of the ways that count since 1936.”</p>
<p>Bucky looks down at his plate. He swallows and licks his lips, but doesn’t speak, doesn’t move his fork to spear another bite. Steve knows exactly what he’s going to say; he can almost see the thoughts forming themselves in his beloved head. Part of him wants to cut Bucky off at the pass, but another part knows that it’s important that Bucky lets those thoughts out of his head where Steve can then crush them to little bits with all the love in his heart.</p>
<p>After a long moment he says, “Steve…” but stops. He’s still looking at his plate. Steve reaches under the table and squeezes his thigh. “Steve, I’m still a mess. I know you know that, but I’m not sure you remember it, sometimes, when you really should. Like, I’m really fucked up, and I’m always gonna be, in some way or another. I know I said I wanted to have a kid someday, but that was just idle speculation, I’m not okay enough for that, and I don’t want you to chain yourself to somebody who’s maybe never gonna be a full person again.” He swallows audibly. “I don’t <em>want</em> you to do that,” he finishes, almost viciously. His eyes are dry, but the muscle at the hinge of his jaw is jumping.</p>
<p>Steve drops his fork and it clangs against the china plate. “Bucky, you’re ninety-one years too late. You saw me getting my six-year-old ass kicked on the playground in 1924 and came to my rescue and picked me up and dusted me off, and I’ve been chained to you ever since. I don’t know how to convince you of this, and I’m pretty sure it’s not my job to convince you at all, but I want you to know that you deserve the life that you want to have, and I’m gonna do my goddamn best to give it to you. I don’t wanna marry you because I think that you’re a full person, whatever the hell that means. I wanna marry you because I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything before. I wanna marry you because you’re the be-all and end-all of my whole fucking life.”</p>
<p>Bucky stares at him, his mouth hanging open, his eyes gleaming in the lamplight. “Jesus, Steve,” he says, his voice a little wobbly. “You never do anything by halves, do you.”</p>
<p>“Nope,” says Steve, matter-of-fact. “Especially not if it’s you.”</p>
<p>Bucky holds his gaze for a moment, his face serious, his eyes bright with unshed tears. Then he nods minutely, heaving a sigh, and forks another bite of pasta into his mouth. They finish eating in silence, but it’s a warm and comfortable silence that spreads over the both of them like an old, worn quilt.</p>
<p>When Bucky’s done, he pushes back from the table and picks up their plates. “Okay, Steve, I concede that you may have a point and that we might as well sign the papers and be married in the eyes of god and man. But just so you know, this doesn’t count as you asking me, or me agreeing. This is just a preliminary step.”</p>
<p>Steve gathers up their napkins to throw in the laundry pile and follows Bucky into the kitchen. “So, is this you telling me that you want a proper proposal? Flowers, a ring, me down on one knee, the works?”</p>
<p>“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” He puts the plates down in the sink and then crouches down to rummage under the sink for a clean dishcloth. “I’m saying that we need to talk about it some more. But maybe, yeah, I guess,”—he huffs in annoyance and says through gritted teeth—“that when the time is right, it might be nice if you actually asked me. To marry you. Properly.”</p>
<p>Steve laughs, “So, like, with a fancy dinner and three hundred red roses? Is three hundred roses enough? Do you want a diamond? How big, like, will the size of a marble do it? Or, I guess,” he says, looking into the distance and stroking his chin thoughtfully, “a flash mob in Times Square? Or I could hire an airplane to write ‘BUCKY WILL YOU MARRY ME?’ over Manhattan.”</p>
<p>“Oh my fucking god, Steve,” Bucky groans. “If you do anything of those things I will play along until we get to the church and then I’ll leave your stupid ass at the altar for being such a… a… a fuckboy,” he finishes, flourishing a fork in the air.</p>
<p>“A what?” Steve says, bemused.</p>
<p>“I learned that from Maria. I don’t actually know what it means, but it’s what she called Tony one day when he was making that joke about Pepper getting twelve percent of the credit, so I feel like it works in this situation. Somehow.”</p>
<p>“Uh huh.” Steve says flatly. “Just for that I’m gonna take you to a Yankees game and propose on the jumbotron.”</p>
<p>Bucky pretends like he’s gonna stab Steve in the belly with the fork and Steve grabs his wrists and pins him to the sink, and the dishes get forgotten.</p>
<p>The next day he has to spend ten minutes picking last night’s dried pasta off the dinner plates with a fingernail, but it’s worth it.</p><hr/>
<p>Summer mellows and crinkles around the edges like a withering leaf, and the days get shorter and the light of the golden hour, streaming at a sharper angle through their living room windows, gets even more golden. Steve has a few overnight missions, but they’re short, and he comes back from all of them safe and sound, and each time Bucky looks less like he’s exhausted, just a little frayed around the edges.</p>
<p>Bucky throws himself into the garden, taking advantage of the lull in the growing season to start preparing it for winter. He prunes the tomatoes down to the last few unripened fruits, tops up the straw bedding, and plants spinach and lettuce and other cool-weather crops. He increases his volunteer hours at the community garden and starts spending more time with Samara and Freja. Several times a week, Steve comes home in the early afternoon and either finds Freja up to her elbows in dirt in the garden while Bucky and Samara talk about overwintering peppers and hardneck versus softneck garlic, or finds a note on the dining room table that says “Next door, come over if you want, love you -B.”</p>
<p>One memorable day, he comes home in the early afternoon, and when he opens the door a wave of toasted-sugar-and-vanilla-scented air rolls over him. Immediately after, he hears the soft swish and pad of Bucky’s socked feet on the kitchen floor and his rough, happy voice singing Ella Fitzgerald:</p>
<p>
  <em>I have eyes for you to give you dirty looks</em><br/>
<em>I have words that do not come from children's books<br/>
</em>

  <em>There's a trick with a knife I'm learning to do<br/>
</em>

  <em>And ev'rything I've got belongs to you<br/>
</em>
</p>
<p>He kicks his shoes off in the entryway and sticks his head through the kitchen door, where he finds Bucky waltzing around the kitchen with Freja on one arm, his other holding her little hand straight out to the side. She’s giggling as he twirls her around, her head lolling back and a line of drool flying off to the side.</p>
<p>When Bucky sees Steve leaning against the doorjamb, he breaks into a grin and waltzes over. “Oh hey, Stevie, look who came to visit.” He leans over to give Steve a kiss, and Freja takes the opportunity to throw herself forward so that Steve either has to catch her or let her slither head-first to the ground between them.</p>
<p>“Perfect timing,” Bucky says, “I need to check the cookies and I wasn’t sure she’d be safe if I put her down. I sat her down by the pantry a few minutes ago to get the cookies in the oven, and when I turned back around, she was plundering the cabinet under the sink.”</p>
<p>Steve gives her his Captain America is Appalled face, but she just says, “Buhbeebuhbeebuhbee” as she tries to stick her fingers in his mouth.</p>
<p>“No, kiddo,” says Bucky from where he’s crouched down in front of the oven, “I’m Bucky. That’s Stevie.” Freja ignores him in favor of trying to pry Steve’s lips apart by brute force.</p>
<p>He pulls her hand away and asks, “Is Samara in the garden?”</p>
<p>Bucky stands up, his knees popping and cracking and grins at him, his face a little happy and a little nonplussed. “Nope. She had to go see a client and her regular babysitter fell through, so she came by and asked if I could watch Freja this afternoon.”</p>
<p>“She asked you to babysit?” Steve says incredulously. “I mean, not that you wouldn’t be a great babysitter, but it’s just… you know…”</p>
<p>“I know!” Bucky says, incredulous himself, arms akimbo. “I was like, ‘Look, Samara, I was the world’s most feared assassin until, like, last year, are you sure you wanna trust me with your kid?’ and she just gave me this look, very Natasha-like, and handed me a diaper bag and left.”</p>
<p>“Speaking of which, someone around here smells a little rank, and it sure ain’t me.” Steve dangles Freja out in front of him and narrows his eyes accusingly while she windmills her legs and laughs at him.</p>
<p>“Oh, shit,” Bucky says.</p>
<p>“Oh, shit is right.”</p><hr/>
<p>At the end of the month, when the leaves of the oak trees are starting to turn red and Steve has to grab a jacket when he leaves for Manhattan in the morning, he decides to take a few days off of work, just because he can. They make no plans ahead of time that involve anything other than staying up late and sleeping later, but on Thursday, Bucky suggests they take a picnic lunch to the beach. Not counting the vacation in July, they’ve only been once, when Sam was visiting. They’d talked about going back to the beach a few other times, but without Sam’s infectious sense of fun, it just wasn’t that appealing. There were too many people and everything smelled like sweat and coconut-scented tanning oil, and if they wanted to get sunburnt, they had a backyard all to themselves in which to do it.</p>
<p>Thursday, however, is a little cloudy and there’s a definite chill in the air. For two guys who aren’t too fond of big crowds, it’s the perfect day to go to the beach.</p>
<p>Bucky makes a quiche in the morning and wraps it up for their lunch with a paper bag of grapes and a dozen chocolate chip cookies and two bottles of lemonade. Steve tidies up the kitchen while Bucky packs everything into the panniers and they take the bike down to the beach at Fort Tilden, which is gratifyingly empty. They eat lunch, then roll up their pant legs and stand in the surf for a while. Then Steve lies down on the blanket with a book over his face and naps while Bucky walks up and down the shore, collecting shells.</p>
<p>Steve wakes up when Bucky comes back and nudges him over so that he can sit down on the blanket, too. “What’re you gonna do with all those shells?” he asks, as Bucky pulls them out of his pockets by the handful and dumps them into the now-empty paper bag.</p>
<p>“I dunno. Nothing. Doing something with them isn’t the point.”</p>
<p>“Well, what’s the point, then?”</p>
<p>“Beachcombing, that’s the whole point. And then a secondary point I guess is being able to look at them and remember that day we went to the beach and ate quiche and looked at the waves.”</p>
<p>“A nice thing to remember,” Steve says, brushing sand out of his hair and leaning over to give Bucky a quick kiss.</p>
<p>They sit in silence for a while, watching the waves chase the sandpipers up and down the beach.</p>
<p>“Hey, Steve?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, Buck?”</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t say anything, just worries his bottom lip between his teeth and stares out to sea. Steve shifts a little closer until their thighs are pressed together and runs his hand down Bucky’s back, tucking the tips of his fingers into the waistband of his sweats at his hip.</p>
<p>“I wanna cut my hair.” Bucky says it softly, almost inaudible above the sound of the waves and the piping of the shorebirds. He glances at Steve quickly out of the corner of his eye, and then turns his gaze back to the horizon.</p>
<p>The first thing Steve feels is a punch of disappointment, a little sad, but mostly petulant. He can feel his face wanting to pout, as if he were five years old and had just been told that he couldn’t have cake for breakfast. But the petulance is quickly overtaken by a kind of fierce pride and joy. “Okay,” he says, “I think that’s a great idea.”</p>
<p>Bucky, startled, whips his head around to stare at Steve in consternation. “But, but, I thought you loved my hair?” He sounds almost offended, as if he had expected Steve to pledge his undying love to his voluminous lion’s mane, or offer to fight for its honor on the field of battle.</p>
<p>Steve laughs out loud at the glare of confusion that he finds so endearing. “Yeah, I do.” He moves his hand from Bucky’s hip to the crown of his head, pulling out the elastic that’s holding his hair in a bun so that it cascades down around his shoulders. He combs his fingers down to the nape of Bucky’s neck and makes a fist, burying his face in the wavy mess and breathing in deeply. <em>Orange blossoms, fresh air, loam. Home.</em></p>
<p>Bucky makes an ambiguous noise. “So, if you love it so much, and I know you think it’s really kinky, like, I know you’d fuck my hair if you could…”</p>
<p>Steve interrupts him: “Never thought of that, actually, but now that you’ve put the idea in my head…”</p>
<p>“Shut up.” Bucky swats Steve’s leg with his human hand. Then he gathers his hair back up and twists it back up into a bun, holding his hand out for the elastic. “What I was saying, before you so rudely interrupted me, was that you’re really stuck on my hair, so it shocks me that you’d be okay with me cutting it.”</p>
<p>“Jesus christ,” Steve mutters. “Look, there’s something I want you to know, and I’ve told you over and over again and I’m gonna keep telling you for the rest of our lives. Two things, actually. First, I am really proud of you for making your own decisions, and I will always <em>always</em> support any decision that you make. I know it’s difficult, what with all the… all the…” He can’t bring himself to say it.</p>
<p>“What with all the brainwashing and torture, etcetera etcetera,” Bucky supplies, rolling his eyes and waving his hand in a get-on-with-it motion.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” says Steve. “That. Anyway, that’s why I’m really happy for you to make a decision about something this personal, even if part of me, a teeny tiny part of me, is sad about it.”</p>
<p>Bucky takes a breath, but Steve barrels on before he can speak. “And the second, most important thing, is that your body belongs to you, not to me, and what you do to it is your business, but there is nothing you could ever do to your body that would ever make me love you less. Cut your hair, tattoo your face, hell, get bottom surgery, none of it would matter.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want bottom surgery?” Bucky scoffs, like he can’t believe how ludicrous Steve is being, but he’s looking off to the side, hiding his face, sifting sand through his metal fingers.</p>
<p>“Whatever, what I mean is that I think that you should cut your hair if you want to and it’s only gonna mean that I love you more, because I love you more every day that passes,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s intrinsic to the universe, like the sun rising in the east, or the laws of thermodynamics.”</p>
<p>Bucky sits silent for a minute, then picks up a handful of sand and lets it trickle onto Steve’s leg. He does this a few more times, making a small mountain on the leg of Steve’s pants that slides off when he flexes his thigh. Then he looks off toward the horizon, darkening quickly now that the sun has set behind them, and says thoughtfully, “What if I grew a goatee like Tony’s?”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Steve says, shoving Bucky, who laughs, brushing the rest of the sand off his leg and hunting around for his shoes, “I was wrong. There <em>is</em> one thing that would make me love you less.”</p><hr/>
<p>Steve is impulsive—of course he is, it’s one of his defining personality traits. But he can also play the long game, and he’s a superb planner, when he has something interesting to set his problem-solving mind to. With every kiss that passes between them and every touch that strikes sparks off the flint of his skin, he feels more ready to go a little further, to push a little harder, to give and to take and to know Bucky in all the myriad ways a person can be known.</p>
<p>The day after they go to the beach, he gets up early and makes a big pot of oatmeal for breakfast. Bucky doesn’t stay in bed too long because it’s one of his volunteer days, so he has to get up and get showered and dressed in time to leave the house and be at the garden by nine-thirty.</p>
<p>When he comes downstairs, Steve is sitting at the table with two bowls of oatmeal topped with hazelnuts and blueberries and maple syrup. He slides his metal fingers through Steve’s messy bedhead as he walks around to the head of the table, and says, as he sits down, “I’ve got bad news.”</p>
<p>“Who’ve I got to murder this time?” Steve asks, his mouth full of oatmeal, not bothering to look up from the paper.</p>
<p>Bucky kicks him lightly in the shin and doesn’t rise to the bait. “I forgot that I’d said I could show a new volunteer the ropes this afternoon. I’ll probably stay over by the park and have lunch at the Thai place we like, so I won’t be home until two or three.”</p>
<p>Steve glances over at him; disappointment is written all over his face, like he’s let his own self down by forgetting that Steve was going to be home all day, like he’s let Steve down by not being there to occupy his time. “Don’t worry about it,” Steve says, and lovingly kicks Bucky back. “I want to get started on a new painting, and it’ll be nice not to have you interrupting me all the time.”</p>
<p>Bucky scowls. “I don’t interrupt you all the time! Or at least, if I do, it’s because you never close the studio door. I can’t help myself, you know that.”</p>
<p>Steve can feel his face turn soft and lovesick; he doesn’t understand how he can be getting all the love he wants and still be lovesick, but there it is. Sometimes he looks at Bucky and feels like he’s going to pass out from the rush of affection that pushes too fast through his too-thin veins. Sometimes it feels like getting drunk; sometimes it feels like having the bends.</p>
<p>“Really, Buck, it’s fine,” he says, and reaches out to stroke his knuckles down the side of Bucky’s stubbly jaw. “It’ll be interesting to be all by myself in the house for a change. It’s been ages since that’s happened.”</p>
<p>Bucky gives him a shrewd look. “Don’t get up to any trouble,” he says, and Steve laughs. <em>Just you wait</em>, he thinks.</p>
<p>He keeps touching Bucky all through breakfast—he can’t help himself, either—and when Bucky’s standing by the door putting his jacket on, Steve pulls him by the sleeve into a filthy kiss, nothing sweet about it, thrusting his tongue past unresisting lips and into Bucky’s minty mouth. “Jesus christ,” Bucky says, wiping his wet chin on his sleeve when Steve finally lets him up for air. Then he’s out the door, but not before Steve catches his ass one last resounding smack.</p>
<p>He does get some painting done, or at least primes the next canvas and thinks about what he wants to do, and then he washes up the breakfast dishes and slips a handwritten list out of the back of a book about pre-Raphaelite painters, the kind of book that Bucky’s not very interesting in pulling off the shelf.</p>
<p>He’d hid the list there after doing some research over the course of a few weeks, snatching a few minutes here and there when Bucky was in the shower or in the garden or otherwise occupied. He folds the list up and sticks it in his pocket and goes for a walk, stopping by the drugstore before he gets back to the house. He plays fetch with Crouton for a while and makes himself lunch, and then, checking the clock, calculating how much time he has left before Bucky walks in through the door, he gets up to some trouble.</p><hr/>
<p>Half past two, Bucky sends him a message that he’s on his way home, and two minutes before three, he bounds through the door, kicking his boots off and stopping to give Crouton a quick pat before he throws himself down on the sofa, where Steve is sitting with the book of pre-Raphaelites and his sketchbook.</p>
<p>“Good day?” he asks, as Bucky swivels around and pushes his head under Steve’s arm, dislodging the art book and claiming Steve’s lap for himself.</p>
<p>“Sure, yeah, the new volunteer caught on to everything right away. But she’s just a kid, right out of high school, and I feel”—he slides his hands down the sides of his face, pulling his cheeks down into jowls—“so fucking old.”</p>
<p>Steve laughs and tosses the book and the sketchbook onto the armchair. Then he pulls Bucky’s hair out of its bun and runs his fingers through it, spreading it out on his thigh. “Freja doesn’t make you feel old.”</p>
<p>“Pssh, Freja can’t even walk yet, she makes me feel like a superior lifeform. But this kid, she reminded me of us, or what I can remember of us. You know, bouncing around all over the place, interested in everything, sharp as a tack and asking me all these questions like I was the wise old man on the top of the mountain.” He sighs as Steve drags his fingertips through his hair, from his temples to the crown on his head. “Fucking whippersnappers.”</p>
<p>Steve loves this, loves having Bucky’s head in his lap, his eyes closed and his lashes fanned out against his lightly-freckled cheeks, loves running his hands through the silky mass of Bucky’s hair, especially since he knows, now, that it's a pleasure with an expiration date. But they can’t sit here forever; he’s got other plans.</p>
<p>“Guess what,” he says, and Bucky’s eyes fly open, then narrow suspiciously.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“I’m ready.”</p>
<p>“Ready for what? I told you not to get up to any trouble.”</p>
<p> “I’m ready to do it,” Steve says, and jerks his hips up so that Bucky’s head bounces on his lap.</p>
<p>Bucky pushes himself up on one elbow, his hair spilling down all over his shoulders, and looks down at Steve’s crotch and then back up at his face. A low laugh rumbles up through his chest and he says, “Stevie, are you being cryptic on purpose? Are you asking me to blow you, or what?” He shifts his weight to his metal hand and slides his human fingers up Steve’s thigh, under the hem of his shorts. “I mean, I don’t mind, you don’t gotta beat around the bush.”</p>
<p>Steve pushes Bucky’s hand away and turns so that they’re face to face. “No, not that. I’m ready for you to fuck me.”</p>
<p>He grins at the way Bucky’s mouth falls open and his eyes go dark and needy in a split second. “Oh,” Bucky says, breathlessly. “Okay, are you sure?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m sure.”</p>
<p>Bucky pushes himself all the way up to his knees and pulls a hair elastic off his wrist, twisting his hair up into its bun again. Then he scoots over until he’s kneeling on the couch right next to Steve and runs his hands over Steve’s shoulders and down his arms, up and down, soothing, petting. “Are you totally sure you want to bottom? ‘Cause it seems that’s what you’re asking for here, but I was thinking it would be better for you to top the first time. Since you’ve done it with… with Peggy before, you’d know what you were doing. I mean, not really.” He shrugs. “But kinda.”</p>
<p>A whole series of obscene images flashes behind Steve’s eyes in a split second. His brain feels like it’s full of tapioca pearls sloshing back and forth as he shakes his head. “I’m… no. I know what I want.”</p>
<p>“Goddamn,” Bucky whispers. “Shit. Okay.” He grabs Steve’s jaw with both hands and kisses him, immediately fucking his tongue into Steve’s mouth just like Steve had done with him that morning. When he pulls off, they’re both breathing like they’ve run sprints to Manhattan and back. “I love taking care of you,” Bucky says, when he catches his breath. “But it’s really sexy when you tell me you know what you want.”</p>
<p>Steve kisses him again, but keeps it soft this time, almost chaste, just brushing his open mouth across Bucky’s wet red lips. “Bucky, I want to go to bed. Right now.”</p>
<p>Bucky growls, deep in his throat, but sits back on his heels and lets Steve stand up before he says, “Alright, but you’d better run because I’m about half a second from pinning you to the floor right here and not letting you back up again this year.” They take the stairs three at a time, Steve laughing hysterically when Bucky’s hands catch at his back pockets, and stumble through the doorway into the bedroom, clumsily shedding clothes as they go. They fall lengthwise across the bed, where Bucky crawls on top of Steve, pressing rough kisses down his neck to his collarbone, worrying the thin skin over the bone with his teeth, and Steve is so deliriously euphoric, his heart feels like it’s about to beat right out of his chest. </p>
<p>After a minute or an hour, Steve can’t tell, it could be a week for all he knows, Bucky gets up to rummage around in the bedside table for the lube. When he turns back around, Steve says, “Wait, just stand there for a second so I can look at you,” and Bucky pauses with his head turned to the side, naked and shining and looking at Steve out of the corner of one dark eye. It’s the same body that Steve sees every day, but every day it strikes him anew how lovely it is, how perfect. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispers, and Bucky looks down at his feet, biting back a smile.</p>
<p>“Flattery will get you nowhere, Stevie,” he says, then grins wickedly and crawls back onto the bed. Steve’s legs fall open automatically, and Bucky presses himself down between them, trapping both of their cocks between their bellies and grinding them hard together.</p>
<p>“Oh, oh,” Steve says, high and tight in his throat as Bucky snakes his hand between their chests and pinches his nipple, “I think… I think… flattery will get me exactly where I wanna go.”</p>
<p>Bucky laughs low and quietly and then scoots back, sitting on his haunches between Steve’s knees and popping the cap on the lube. He pours some on his human fingers and then slips his metal hand under the back of Steve’s knee, pushing it up toward his chest.</p>
<p>“Doing okay?” says, the back of his lubed-up hand brushing soothingly up and down the inside of Steve’s thigh. Steve nods and licks his lips and waits.</p>
<p>The lube is cold when Bucky brushes his finger over Steve’s hole, and he presses his head back into the pillow and closes his eyes. But then the finger stops and Bucky says, “Wait a minute.”</p>
<p>Steve starts to laugh, a nervous giggle rising up through his throat like bubbles in an agitated soda pop.</p>
<p>“Wait wait wait,” Bucky says, “Did you start without me? Did you open yourself up? <em>Steve??” </em>He sounds incredulous, absolutely bamboozled, and Steve cracks an eye and looks back down at him, kneeling between his spread legs with his human hand out of sight and a look on his face like he’s just realized for the first time that Steve is capable of foresight and planning.</p>
<p>Steve clamps one hand over his mouth, trying to stifle the nervous giggle, but the position, the look on Bucky’s face, the whole situation in general—spread-eagled on the bed with the very tip of Bucky’s middle finger frozen inside him—is too much, and it takes him a long moment to calm down enough to say, “So I’ve been doing some research…”</p>
<p>Bucky just keeps looking at him, unbelieving, “You…”</p>
<p>“You’re not the only one who knows how to use the internet!” He laughs again, jostling Bucky’s hand where it’s tucked up snug under his balls, the tip of his finger just barely breaching his hole, and it tickles in a way that’s not funny at all. He takes a deep breath. “Anyway. I figured out there were… some steps. So I took them. Didn’t really want to wait. Now here we are. Please stop looking at me like that and get on with it.”</p>
<p>“I…” Bucky says, and then snaps his mouth shut, clearly coming to a decision and deciding to just run with it. He bites his lip and looks down at his hand nestled between Steve’s legs and says, “Okay, fine,” and sinks his finger in easily to the last knuckle, meeting no resistance. Steve watches, breathless, as Bucky’s eyes flutter shut, and he leans his forehead against Steve’s cocked knee. “Fuck,” he breathes. “I was, I was looking forward to doing this part myself, but this is… you’re so loose, this is so hot.”</p>
<p>“Don’t take your time,” Steve says, his voice raveled to a thready whisper as Bucky pulls his finger back slowly, pressing deliberately up against Steve’s prostate on his way out. But Bucky, that asshole, takes his time anyway, unwinding Steve like a spool of kite string being pulled along on the breeze.</p>
<p>Finally, Bucky slicks his cock up and lines himself up and starts to press in, and though Steve has been loose and open and fucked on three fingers for what feels like hours, now, the feeling of a cock pushing up slick and hot into the very center of his tender body is nothing like he thought it was going to be, it’s so much more, it feels like he’s being split painlessly open from the root of him up through his chest and into the back of his throat.</p>
<p>It’s nothing like using his fingers, it feels like it’s never going to stop, but finally, Bucky has pushed all the way in and is fully seated with his hands bracketing Steve’s chest, panting, the tendrils of hair that have escaped from his bun stuck to his neck like seaweed. “God, Steve,” he says, his voice shaking. “Are you… is this okay?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Steve breathes, trying to adjust to the feeling, doubting he ever will. His own voice sounds like it’s been run through a wringer. “And you? This is kind of your first time, too, you know.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Bucky leans over as well as he can with Steve’s legs in the way and rests his forehead on Steve’s chest. “I’m glad it’s you.”</p>
<p>Steve looks down at the dark crown of Bucky’s beloved head, and he seems both far away and incredibly close, like he’s a mirage, a trick of the light, like Steve is looking at him through both ends of the binoculars at once. “I’m always glad it’s you,” he whispers.</p>
<p>Later, lying dozy and still in the late-afternoon sunlight that streams in through the curtains, Bucky on his back next to him, sound asleep with his metal hand locked around Steve’s wrist and his leg thrown over Steve’s thighs, he feels a little bit of incongruous sadness well up inside his chest.</p>
<p>Bucky had told him that he didn’t want to hear <em>If only we had…</em>, but Steve can’t help it. It feels like the biggest oversight of his life; it feels like his oldest mistake. If only Steve had told Bucky he was queer, if only they had found themselves on the same page, if only they had fallen in love in 1936, they could have been doing this for years before the dirty maelstrom of the war caught them both up. If only, if only.</p>
<p>It’s in his nature to kick himself when he’s down, blame himself for things he has no control over—<em>all I had to do was hold him</em>, he’d told Peggy in that bombed-out pub—and he knows that if Bucky could hear the thoughts bleating inside his head, he’d smack the back of his neck and tell him to shut up. But then he hears a little voice whispering in his ear, and it’s not his, it’s not Dr. Castaño’s—it sounds like the voice of reason.</p>
<p>
  <em>What if you had loved him as more than a friend, what if you had loved him like a soulmate, when he fell? Would you have been able to stand the thought of living without him? Would you have jumped, too? Then who would have been there to stand in the belly of the helicarrier and tell him that his name was James Buchanan Barnes?</em>
</p>
<p>He grits his teeth against the thick, choking lump in his throat and resolves not to cry, not even to sniffle; Bucky will hear him and wake up worried and sad, and Steve would rather punch himself in the face than let that happen.</p>
<p>The voice is right, whatever it is, and so is Bucky. The past is the past, and this, inexplicably, is the future.</p>
<p>Bucky mumbles something under his breath that Steve can’t catch and rolls over toward the other side of the bed. His metal hand doesn’t let go of Steve’s wrist, and Steve could tug it out of his grasp, but he doesn’t; he lets himself be pulled along until he’s plastered up against Bucky’s back, face buried in the wild nest of his hair.</p>
<p>He closes his eyes and lets himself be surrounded by the smell of Bucky, the smell of their bed, of orange blossoms and clean sweat and the unmistakable undertone of dirty sheets that still smell like sex. Eventually, the sadness that sits like a lump of pig iron in the bottom of his heart melts and dissolves and is transmuted, somehow, into a puddle of gratitude as he lies nestled up to Bucky, their two bodies like two warm Zs in the middle of a snore. His arm is around Bucky’s waist, his wrist still caught in that implacable metal grip, and he wishes briefly, as his mind begins to fizzle at the edges, that it would never let him go. Without really thinking about it, he matches his own breathing to the slow, hypnotic rise and fall of Bucky’s broad back, and feels nothing but contentment as he tips over the edge into the sparkling well of sleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Lookout: Captain! Two points off the starboard bow!<br/>Captain: What? What d'you see?<br/>Lookout: I'm not sure, sir, but it looks like a bit o' plot<br/>Captain: Impossible, this fic doesn't have plot. It's a highly self-indulgent series of vignettes tied together in a loose structure based around the months of the year.<br/>Lookout: T'was only a glimpse, but I'm sure I saw a bit o' plot on the horizon<br/>Captain: Might have been a speck o' dust in yer eye. We shall have to wait until next week to find out.</p>
<p>BONUS CONTENT: The big feelings reveal in ch. 7 originally hinged on a secret playlist that Bucky had made about Steve, but I rewrote that whole section because reasons and the playlist didn't make the cut. However, it actually exists, and I've been building it since I started writing this fic more than a year ago, so if you'd like to see what songs remind Bucky of Steve, you can listen <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0812zcLKXyENYVEkdqlZXO?si=7HQv5NnpSfSFWkNfHEu8cA">here</a>.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. October</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter references something from the first work in this series, <em>A Little Key, a Heavy Door</em>, called Secret Skeleton, which an invention of Tony's that is basically Secret Santa, but you're responsible for the Halloween costume of the person whose name you draw. If you haven't read <em>A Little Key</em>, or you have, but you want to refresh your memory, the relevant passages are in chapter 2, about two-thirds of the way down the page.</p><p> </p><p>Note/spoiler: this chapter ends on an angsty cliffhanger; if you're reading this in real time and would rather not suffer the suspense, wait until the next chapter is posted and read them both together (everything is resolved)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On October 1st, Natasha corners Steve as he comes out of the showers at the Tower gym. “Let’s go,” she says, jerking her thumb. “You’re taking me home.”</p><p>“Uh, you live here,” Steve says, glancing up at the ceiling. “You need me to ride upstairs with you?”</p><p>“No, featherbrain, you’re taking me home with you.”</p><p>“Oh,” Steve says intelligently, following her into the elevator. “I… why?”</p><p>She spins around on her heel and stabs at the button for the garage level. Steve’s stomach does the pleasant little swoop that the Tower’s high-speed elevators always provoke as Natasha cocks an eyebrow. “Can’t a girl invite herself over to her best friend’s house without getting the third degree?”</p><p>“Well, sure,” Steve says, as the elevator dings and the doors open onto the garage. “Wait. Are we best friends?”</p><p>Natasha, already halfway to Steve’s bike, turns around and grins at him over her shoulder. “I dunno, are we?” Steve can feel an irresistible smile spreading across his own face. “I mean,” she continues, pulling a motorcycle helmet out of nowhere and yanking it over her head, “Bucky has been demoted to live-in boyfriend, so that leaves the position open.”</p><p>“Demoted?” Steve asks with a laugh, slinging his leg over the bike.</p><p>Natasha hops up behind him and squeezes his hips lightly with her knees like an affable python. “Although maybe I’d have to fight Sam in mortal combat for the title if he ever moved up here,” she continues, ignoring him. “Now step on it, we need to be there in forty-five minutes.”</p><p>“So bossy,” Steve complains, pulling on his own helmet.</p><p>As he turns the key in the ignition, he hears her, over the rumble of the engine, shout, “Get used to it, it’s part and parcel of being Steve Rogers’s best friend.”</p><p>When they pull up in front of the house, Bucky is waiting on the steps wearing what is secretly Steve’s favorite outfit: black boots, black jeans, black shirt, black jacket. Bucky looks good in every color, but Steve especially likes him in black; it softens the line of his jaw and makes him look younger, his face above the collar of his shirt glowing like a soft beacon in the warm, mid-afternoon light. He’s clean-shaven, uncharacteristically, and his hair is pulled back in a low bun. “There you are!” he says. “I was getting worried.” He’s bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.</p><p>“We’ve got plenty of time,” Natasha says soothingly as she steadies herself on Steve’s shoulder and hops off the bike. She hands her helmet to Steve without looking back at him and loops her arm through Bucky’s, pulling him out the low gate and down the sidewalk before Steve has even got the bike locked up. “We’ll be back in a couple hours, Steve,” Natasha calls over her shoulder. And then, fainter, “And I’m staying for dinner!”</p><p>Steve watches them walk away and heaves a sigh. It’s true that Bucky is older than he is, both chronologically and in terms of lived experience. There are times when it seems like he has seen every one of his ninety-eight years, especially after a few nights in a row where he can’t sleep. Although the nightmares don’t bother him much anymore—in fact, Steve has to think for a moment before he can remember the last time Bucky had one—there are just nights where he can’t close his eyes, and the next day he looks too much like the Bucky that Steve had pulled off the table in Kreischberg. Then Steve makes him milkshakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, spends hours rubbing arnica salve into Bucky’s aching joints until his own hands ache from the strain, and ties himself to Bucky’s side, touching, calming, soothing, babying him until whatever ghost is haunting him gives up the fight and goes off to bother someone else on another plane of existence.</p><p>But those nights are few and far between, getting fewer and further, and Steve now has the distinct feeling that Bucky is getting younger while Steve himself is aging at a normal rate. It’s his easy laugh, the carefree way he talks about anything that catches his interest, the glint in his eye when he pokes subtle fun at Steve like a raven tweaking a dog’s tail, the way he conspires with Natasha while Steve is left to play the part of the clueless, good-natured old man.</p><p>Once they’ve turned the corner and disappeared from sight, he goes inside and takes two pizza crusts out of the freezer to defrost, takes a shower, changes the sheets on the bed, puts a load of darks in the laundry, and, at a loss for more ways to waste time, lies down on the couch with a book and promptly falls asleep.</p><p>He wakes up a few hours later to the sound of the front door closing and Bucky’s boots on the hall floor. “Steve?” he says tentatively from the doorway. Steve opens his eyes, and, for a moment, still caught in that twilight state between sleeping and waking, he thinks he’s gone back in time. Or maybe, as Bucky approaches the foot of the couch and peers down at Steve, who is gaping blearily up at him, it’s that time has finally caught up with him, the universe has finally realized its mistake and has come to get him in the glorious future and drag him back through a wormhole to 1936.</p><p>Bucky has finally cut his hair. It’s very short on the sides and long on top, a look that Steve has seen around Brooklyn but doesn’t know what to call. His hair, together with his clean-shaven jaw makes him look young, so unbearably young. The tilt of Bucky’s head as he peers down at Steve makes him feel like he’s five-foot-four again, standing split-lipped in an alley as he looks up at Bucky so carefree and cocky in his officer’s uniform. His heart clenches painfully in his chest, something like nostalgia shot through with a streak of molten lust.</p><p>“Holy shit,” he whispers.</p><p>Bucky cocks an eyebrow at him, but he looks more apprehensive than amused. “So,” he says, his hands balled into fists in the pockets of his jeans, “what do you think?”</p><p>“What do I think?” Steve stands up and walks around the end of the chaise longue, sliding his hands under Bucky’s jacket to grab him by the waist and pull their bodies together. “What do I think?” He walks Bucky backward until he hits the wall and slides his hands up Bucky’s sides, over his chest, and up his neck until he’s cupping Bucky’s face between his palms. Bucky looks more amused than apprehensive, now, the corner of his lips quirked up and his gaze flicking between Steve’s eyes and his mouth. Steve smooths his palm over the back of Bucky’s head, where it’s shaved close to his scalp, and then runs his fingers through the longer, much longer mop of hair that hangs over his forehead. “I had forgotten that your hair is curly when it’s short,” he says, that first firecracker of lust giving way, for a moment, to a melting sort of tenderness. “I’d forgotten how good you look with short hair.”</p><p>“It’s not <em>that</em> curly,” Bucky says, ducking his chin, suddenly a little shy under the weight of Steve’s gaze.</p><p>“Nah, it’s just curly enough,” Steve says, pulling a lock of it down over Bucky’s brow, where it reaches the bridge of his nose and springs back when he lets it go. “You look like a cherub.” He runs his fingers through it again, sweeping it back from Bucky’s face. “Well, a cherub from hell, maybe. You look too wicked to be one of those Sistine Chapel cherubs.”</p><p>Bucky laughs, low and rumbly in his chest. “Well, Nat said she was going to the nursery to buy a plant for Bruce, so we have maybe twenty minutes before she gets back. If you wanna do something wicked.”</p><p>“Oh, I forgot about Nat.” Steve wrinkles his nose. “That’s not enough time.”</p><p>“It’s enough for a quickie.” Bucky smirks and adjust the position of his hips so that they’re pressed flush together. Neither one of them is hard, not quite yet, but it wouldn’t take but half a minute to get there.</p><p>But Steve growls, “I don’t want a quickie. I want to eat you up with a spoon and I wanna take my time doing it.”</p><p>Bucky scrunches his eyes shut and bites his bottom lip and lets out a breathy little whine. Steve imagines, briefly, Natasha falling down an open manhole and then feels abjectly guilty about it until Bucky says, “Well, kiss me, at least.”</p><p>“Okay, fine,” Steve grumbles, “and let it stand as a promise.”</p><p>When Natasha comes back twenty minutes later with a giant <em>Monstera deliciosa</em> in tow, she gives Bucky a look and says, archly, “Messed it up already, I see.”</p><p>“Yeah, Steve can’t keep his hands out of it,” Bucky says accusingly, but without heat, from the dining room where he’s setting the table. “He’s obsessed with my hair.”</p><p>“So, Steve, do you like it?” Natasha asks, and he when looks over his shoulder, up to his wrists in pizza dough, he sees that she’s smirking at him.</p><p>“Yeah, of course,” he says. “Bucky makes any haircut look good.”</p><p>“Flattery will get you nowhere, Stevie,” Bucky says, his voice a bright balloon full of laughter.</p><p>Steve turns around and sees Bucky, through the doorway, smoothing his hair down, trying to get it back under control from where Steve’s hands had messed it up earlier. He stalks across the kitchen and, giving his floury hands a cursory dusting on his jeans, runs his fingers from Bucky’s temples back to his crown, messing it up again and giving a quick, hidden tug just because he can. “Oh, flattery will get me everywhere,” he says, not quite a growl because they have company.</p><p>Natasha looks back and forth between them, her face a study in amusement and good-natured disgust. “I don’t think I’ll be staying for dessert.”</p><p>“Yeah,” says Bucky, a little breathlessly, his face pink in the buttery glow of the lamp on the sideboard. He clears his throat. “Probably the best idea.”</p>
<hr/><p>[Tony]: AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!! IT’S OCTOBER 15<br/>
[Natasha]: Ugh, not again<br/>
[Bruce]: Oh jesus<br/>
[Bucky]: What happens on october 15<br/>
[Tony]: OH HO HO BUCKO<br/>
[Tony]: It’s time for secRET SKELETON!!!!!!!<br/>
[Bucky]: Oh I know what secret skeleton is, I saw a pic of Steve from last year<br/>
[Bucky]: Who was responsible for that btw, I need to thank u<br/>
[Natasha]: Not me &gt;:(<br/>
[Bucky]: I keep that pic in my bedside table for when Steve’s on away missions<br/>
[Clint]: LMFAO<br/>
[Tony]: ANYWAY, friendly reminder to keep your kinks out of the fucking group chat<br/>
[Tony]: And be at the Tower today after lunch for a super-secret meeting of utmost importance to draw names out of the helmet<br/>
[Tony]: Or be square<br/>
[Tony]: Steve you better not skip out, you’re too square already<br/>
[Steve]: ffs<br/>
[Bucky]: I’ll make sure he shows up<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p>“How are you gonna make sure I show up?” Steve fixes Bucky with a challenging look over the rim of his coffee cup.</p><p>“I’m gonna go with you, that’s how.”</p><p>He’s sitting slouched in his chair at the head of the table, wearing plaid flannel pajama pants and Steve’s green hoodie, so ragged around the sleeves now that it looks like bedraggled lace, and his hair is a stork’s nest perched on the crown of his head. Steve gives him a slow, skeptical up-and-down and says, “I gotta leave in twenty minutes and you’re still eating breakfast in your pajamas.”</p><p>Bucky gets a mulish glint in his eye and shoves the rest of the toast into his mouth, carefully drains the rest of his coffee, and scoots his chair back from the table. “Quick shower and I’m ready to go,” he says, although it’s hard to understand around the mouthful of half-chewed bread and peanut butter. Steve rolls his eyes and sighs, but goes back to scrolling through his phone while he waits for Bucky to get ready.</p><p>When they pull into the Tower garage on the bike an hour later, he can feel Bucky tense up behind him. His human arm remains relaxed and loose on Steve’s hip, but the metal arm betrays him, recalibrating around his waist with a zing. He can’t hear it over the purr of the bike echoing around the inside of the garage, but he feels it, a little electrical buzz that shivers through the stiff leather of his jacket.</p><p>“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he says as he dismounts. Bucky’s already waiting for him off to the side, helmet dangling by its chinstrap from his hand. Steve tucks his own helmet under his arm and runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair, which the helmet has flattened across his forehead, fluffing it up a little so that the loose curls spring back into shape.</p><p>“It’s just... I haven’t spent any time in Manhattan. Not since last year,” he says quietly, looking a little sheepish. “Since I talk to Dr. Zaidi on the phone, there’s been no reason for me to come back. And this is the first time I’ve been to the Tower since… since that first time, and… and this all feels really weird,” he finishes plaintively.</p><p>Steve’s mind flashes back to that day, now more than a year past, when Bucky had walked into the Tower lobby and turned himself in to SHIELD. He hadn’t been there, but he’d seen the footage of Bucky on his knees, his hands cuffed behind him, the Tower’s entire security force at his back with their guns drawn.</p><p>He closes his eyes briefly, then cups Bucky’s cheek in the palm of his hand. “Okay, let’s talk about the plan, then. I’ve got to go to training, which today is just one-on-one sparring and some group melees. We’ll be at the gym, so you can come along and watch us, or use the climbing wall, or run on a treadmill, or whatever else you feel like doing. Then we need to eat lunch, and I was thinking about going to this ramen place over in Hell’s Kitchen that I like. Maybe Nat or Clint will come with us. And then we’ll come back here and draw names, and then go back home. It’s”—he slips his phone out of his back pocket and glances at the time—“quarter past nine, so no more than four hours, total.”</p><p>Bucky takes a deep breath, holds it for a beat, and lets it out again slowly. “Okay, that sounds... I don’t think I’ll have a problem with any of that.”</p><p>“Sure, and if you do, you can always slip up to the common room, which has a huge TV and every gaming console from the last thirty years.” Bucky’s nodding, and his eyes seem a little brighter, his expression a little less strained. “And I have an apartment here, you know, though I haven’t set foot in it in months. So if you need to be alone, you can go hang out there.”</p><p>Bucky gives him a smile, small but genuine, and slips the fingers of his human hand through Steve’s. “Alright, then, let’s not keep everyone waiting.”</p><p>When they step out of the elevator at the gym level, Steve sees immediately through the glass observation wall that they’ve kept everyone waiting for them anyway, even Bruce, who never trains with them, and Maria, who’s not even an Avenger. When he pushes open the door and leads Bucky through, fingers still laced together, everyone turns to look at them. “Uh, hey guys,” he says with an awkward half-wave. “Sorry we’re a little late.”</p><p>Natasha’s eyes are sparkling, Bruce’s eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead, and Tony says, “Holy shit!”</p><p>Maria sticks two fingers in her mouth and wolf whistles loud enough that it echoes all around the gym.</p><p>“Damn, Barnes, looking good,” Clint says. “Nice haircut.”</p><p>Steve glances over, and he can tell that Bucky is biting back the smile that wants to spread all over his face, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity appropriate to the world’s foremost ex-assassin. “Uh, thanks,” Bucky mutters gracelessly. “It was Nat that made me go through with it, though.”</p><p>“Good work, Romanova,” Tony says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Not that I didn’t like the Ra Ra Rasputin look, but I’m loving the dark mode Shirley Temple undercut thing you’ve got going on now.”</p><p>Bucky looks at Steve and Steve shakes his head. ”Don’t bother, if you acknowledge him, he only gets worse.”</p><p>“No exceptions,” Bruce says calmly over Tony’s spluttering.</p><p>In the end, Bucky sheds his jacket and boots and scales the climbing wall in his green pineapple socks, where he sits with Clint on the little ledge at the top. Steve can hear them talking as he leans against the bottom of the wall, watching Natasha go easy on an unsuited Tony on the mat.</p><p>“You should come with Steve more often and watch us train,” Clint says, his voice filtering down from above, “Especially on the rare days that Thor is here. I mean, who wouldn’t want a front-row seat to watch Steve ‘Grade-A American Beef’ Rogers whale on the man who puts the <em>ass</em> in <em>Asgard</em>? And then get his butt whooped in turn by Natasha ‘Please Step on Me’ Romanova?”</p><p>Steve can feel a goofy smile spreading across his face when he hears Bucky laugh, open and happy.</p><p>“It’s true,” Bucky agrees, “this is better than bare-knuckle boxing.”</p><p>“Hell, Barnes, it’s almost better than porn, unless you’re vanilla.”</p>
<hr/><p>In the Avengers common room after lunch, they all stand around the massive oak dining table while Tony, wearing a pointy black witch’s hat with a torn veil flung over his shoulder, uses a screwdriver to mix the tangled slips of paper inside an Iron Man helmet. “Double, double toil and trouble,” he says theatrically, while Pepper, who’d showed up after training, rolls her eyes, and Steve complains, “Get on with it, Tony, I’ve got things to do this afternoon.”</p><p>Natasha, standing on the other side of Bucky, leans over and whispers, “Steve, what did I tell you about calling him a thing? It’s dehumanizing.”</p><p>Steve scoffs, but he can feel his face pass rapidly from pink to red like a startled cuttlefish, and Bucky grins, giving Natasha a wink where he thinks that Steve can’t see him.</p><p>Out loud, Bucky says, “Wouldn’t it be easier to write some kind of algorithm so that your computer could do this instead?”</p><p>Tony pauses in his stirring and points his screwdriver accusingly across the table. “Easy? <em>Easy?</em> That’s child’s play for someone like me. But,” he continues, glaring around the circle now, “these suspicious luddites insist on doing it the old-fashioned way with bits of paper because of something something rigged something something cheating, I don’t know. As if Jarvis weren’t the most upright and trustworthy of all of us.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir,” comes Jarvis’s disembodied voice from the ceiling. Steve only feels Bucky stiffen because they’re standing with their shoulders pressed together. Bucky leans further into Steve’s side, as if his instincts are telling him to hide, inconspicuously but with enough force that Steve has to step back with his left foot so as not to overbalance. He slips his hand into Bucky’s back pocket and when Bucky looks over, he does a little dance with his eyebrows, trying to convey, <em>It’s alright, I’ll explain Jarvis later</em>. Evidently that’s all Bucky needs, because he relaxes again and then, with a boldness that Steve should have come to expect but which surprises him every time, he shifts his hips and presses his ass back into Steve’s hand. The meaning is unmistakable, but no one notices; Steve’s already pink enough as it is.</p><p>“Anyway,” Tony goes on, “no more stalling. You all know the rules, take a name and guard it well. No peeking until you are safely at home, or at least somewhere far away from your colleagues. We are surrounded, if I must remind you, by spies and assassins who will stop at nothing to sniff out our secrets.”</p><p>“Hear, hear,” Natasha says under her breath, giving her fist a subtle pump.</p><p>“If you draw your own name, congratulations, you are free to choose your own costume. But it had better be up to snuff.” He points to his own witch’s hat with the screwdriver, narrowly missing his eye. “And two of our number are missing, Thor and Sam, because apparently when I say ‘<em>Avengers assemble,’</em> they assume that being out of the state, country, and/or planet is an excuse for not assembling. So, the last two names in the helmet will be given to some intern-type person, who will stuff them into envelopes at random and drop them into the mail.” Everyone nods, or rolls their eyes, depending on whether they’d listened to this exact same speech last year.</p><p>“Okay, now hop to it,” he says imperiously, sliding the helmet down the table to Pepper on his left.</p>
<hr/><p>When they’re finally back at home and through the front door, Bucky says, “I can’t stand it anymore, I gotta know.” He pulls his slip of paper out of his back pocket and unfolds it before he even takes off his jacket, completely ignoring Crouton, who is winding around his legs meowing piteously.</p><p>“Yessss,” he crows, “I got Nat!” He does a little victory wiggle in front of the shoe bench.</p><p>Steve, hardly more patient, hangs his jacket up and pulls out his own slip of paper. “Ooh, Maria,” he says, and he gives Bucky a high five that rings so loudly through the hall that Crouton takes off up the stairs like a shot.</p><p>“Aww, poor baby,” Bucky coos, chagrined, and runs upstairs to coax him out from under their bed while Steve flops down on the couch in the living room. When Bucky comes down a few minutes later holding Crouton in his arms like a big bouquet of tiger lilies, Steve has his fingers laced behind his head and is staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. Bucky drops Crouton carefully onto Steve’s chest, but he jumps off and stalks over to the middle of the living room rug, where he begins to wash his front paw self-importantly.</p><p>Bucky shrugs. “Oh well, your loss,” he says and drapes himself across Steve’s chest instead.</p><p>“Maria and Nat,” Steve says, “We did real good this year.”</p><p>“Yeah, but we really gotta make it count. Should we make them go as a couple?”</p><p>Steve narrows his eyes, looking down his nose at Bucky’s face, his chin pillowed on his hands on Steve’s chest. He’s still getting used to Bucky’s new haircut, the way it rounds his face out, the way the pretty pink shells of his ears are visible, now, all the time. He reaches up and smooths his thumb down the curve of Bucky’s right ear and around the back, into the hidden, sweet-smelling crease where Steve whispers all of his secrets.</p><p>“They’re not a couple, though,” he says.</p><p>Bucky just shrugs, and Steve opens his mouth to ask, <em>Do you know something I don’t?</em>, when Bucky says, “I wonder if the people who got us are gonna make us go as a couple?”</p><p>“Oh, for sure, and you can bet your sweet ass it’s gonna be something really embarrassing. I mean,” Steve sighs, “you remember last year.”</p><p>“Do I ever,” Bucky says, his eyes widening. “I wasn’t kidding about that picture, I still have it in my bedside table.”</p><p>Steve pulls his hand away from where he’s running his palm up and down the satisfyingly prickly hair at the back of Bucky’s head and scrubs it over his face. “Oh my god, that is so embarrassing.”</p><p>Bucky hums in assent. “Mmmhmm, and so, so hot. Like”—he sits up now, on his knees in between Steve’s thighs so that he can gesture freely with his hands—“the pants were so tight, like your Cap suit pants but without the kevlar, so you could see ev-ree-thing,” he says, drawing each syllable of the word out. “And the way it only zipped halfway, when you crossed your arms it just pushed your tits right up and out…” He trails off, biting his lip, a faraway look in his eyes. Then slowly, his hands up come and he makes a melon-squeezing motion in the air. Steve bursts out laughing.</p><p>“Don’t laugh,” Bucky says, “you have no idea what that picture does to me.”</p><p>“I think I’ve got the gist,” Steve says, running both of his hands up Bucky’s thighs to where his jeans crease at the top and digging his thumbs into the tender spot right inside his hipbones.</p><p>Bucky looks thoughtful. “Do you still have that costume?”</p><p>Steve knows where this conversation is going, but he feels like they’re running downhill and nothing can stop them now but a concrete embankment. “Yeah, what of it?”</p><p>“I think you know what of it.” Bucky gives him a look that’s equal parts challenging and lascivious, and how could he possibly resist that?</p>
<hr/><p>At the beginning of the next week, Steve comes back from Manhattan after a relatively short workday, right before lunch. As soon as he walks in the door, Bucky pounces on him, grabs him by the shoulders and says, “Stevie, we gotta go shopping.”</p><p>Steve leans forward and kisses Bucky on the serious crease between his eyebrows and the corner of his upturned mouth. “Hello to you too,” he says as he pulls back, but Bucky chases his mouth to give him a proper kiss.</p><p>“Sure, we can go shopping,” he says when Bucky finally lets him go, “but why the rush?” He hangs his jacket on the coatrack and toes his shoes off before following him Bucky the kitchen. There, Bucky is dishing stir-fried noodles from the wok into two shallow bowls. He hands Steve both bowls and pulls open the silverware drawer with a crash and a jangle to root around for their chopsticks. After a minute, he finds two pairs and emerges holding them triumphantly like a bouquet of flowerless stems, then he shoos Steve into the dining room and they sit down.</p><p>“Well, first of all, Samara came over this morning ‘cause I wanted to ask about her about pruning the apple tree, and she said that this Wednesday is Freja’s first birthday, and that they’re gonna have a birthday party, and that we’re invited.”</p><p>He’s shoveling noodles into his mouth like a natural-born chopstick user while Steve is having to concentrate with his tongue stuck out of the side of his mouth. Finally, Bucky looks over at Steve’s barely-touched bowl of food and says, “Mother of god, Steven, go get a fork or you’ll still be eating your lunch noodle by noodle long after the stores have closed.”</p><p>Steve grins and flips him off, then walks into the kitchen to get a fork while Bucky mutters, “Fuck’s sake, such an embarrassment. Christ.”</p><p>When Steve gets back to the table, he twirls his fork in his noodles Italian-style and laughs out loud when Bucky rolls his eyes and huffs peevishly through his nose. “So…” Steve prompts. “A birthday party?”</p><p>Bucky immediately stops glowering and brightens up. “Yeah! So, it’s Freja’s birthday, and we’re invited to the party, which means that we need to find a really good present.”</p><p>Steve wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Right, so what kind of present do you buy for a one-year-old?”</p><p>“I don’t have a fucking clue,” says Bucky, stuffing some more stir fry into his mouth and then clacking his chopsticks together thoughtfully. “I think we should go to an actual toy store and ask the person who works there. They’re bound to be more knowledgeable than us.”</p><p>This is how they find themselves, a few hours later, pushing open the rainbow-painted door of a shop on Bedford Avenue called, inexplicably, Little My. The space is long and narrow, but the right-hand wall is covered from floor to ceiling with dark wood bookshelves, and the left-hand wall is a riot of colorful toys. Some of them are so familiar to Steve that they make his heart clench: dolls with perfect little faces, a wooden rocking horse in the shop window with a yarn mane and tail, stiff-looking round-limbed bears with creamy golden fur, even a little red wagon, exactly the kind of wagon that Steve had coveted desperately when he was a small child in a small family with a budget too small for extravagant presents.</p><p>A lot of the other toys, though, are completely unfamiliar: wild, alien-looking plushes, exotic animals made out of molded plastic, a staggering array of tiny little metal cars, and boxes and boxes of something called Lego.</p><p>He’s standing, gaping at the little red wagon, his heart full of conflicting emotions and his eyes getting misty, when Bucky grabs his elbow and points up toward the ceiling. That’s when he notices, for the first time, a steady<em> clickity-clack</em> permeating the otherwise hushed atmosphere of the shop, and sees a little blue engine pulling a couple of boxcars and a red caboose down a track that’s suspended from the ceiling.</p><p>He looks down at Bucky, whose eyes are shining and whose mouth is hanging open in delight, and whispers, “This place is amazing.”</p><p>At that moment, a young woman with half a dozen piercings and blue-green hair in two pigtail braids comes up and asks them if they need any help, but when Steve says, “Yes, actually,” Bucky interrupts. “Not yet, we just want to look around a little bit first.”</p><p>The spend almost an hour and a half just looking around, following each other through the store, excitedly pointing out different toys, reading out loud the copy on the back of different packages, and getting lost in the picture books. The soft wooden chimes above the door sound every once in a while as people drift through, and there’s a brief uptick in the foot traffic when school lets out, but the shop assistant leaves them alone, and they, for their part, almost forget what they’ve come for.</p><p>It’s when they’re standing at the counter with an armful of picture books and a handful of hand-carved wooden tops in various shapes that had caught their attention and a little die-cast 1933 Chrysler Phaeton that Bucky just had to have, that the shop assistant asks if they’d found everything they needed and they remember that they’re actually shopping for a child and not just themselves.</p><p>She laughs at their embarrassment and picks out a few things that are appropriate for one-year-olds: a lime green plastic car with a handle, perfect for pushing around the floor, a tugboat with a spout for playing in the bath, a set of felt farm animal finger puppets, and a floppy white rabbit with a pink nose and an impossibly sweet face.</p><p>“What do you think?” Bucky asks, raising his eyebrows, and Steve knows that he’s asking if they can just buy the whole lot.</p><p>So he says, “I think we should just get everything,” and when Bucky beams at him, “You know, it’s not every day you turn a whole one year old.”</p><p>As the young woman is wrapping up their purchases behind the counter, Bucky asks, “So, do you own this place?”</p><p>“Oh, no,” the woman laughs. “I’m just a college student. But it’s my family’s store, and I man the register after I get out of my morning classes.” She reaches under the counter for a big paper bag and shakes it out, nestling Steve’s picture books at the bottom and stacking the tops and the car and the wrapped packages on top.</p><p>Bucky shoots Steve a significant look out of the corner of the eye and says, “So, what kind of qualifications do you need to run a toy store like this?”</p><p>The woman throws her head back and laughs, her earrings jingling softly. “Qualifications, that’s a good one,” she says. “Look, this started as my dad’s thing because he’s a sculptor and he started making wooden toys on the side to sell. But then he realized that it was way more cost-effective to sell other people’s toys and just concentrate on the business side of things, so that’s what he does when he’s not sculpting. He goes to conventions and reads the trade papers and stuff like that, but mostly he just orders the kind of merchandise that he likes and that people in the neighborhood ask him for. My mom takes care of the money stuff, but she studied engineering, so, you know. Neither one of them have any ‘qualifications.’” She makes air quotes around the last word.</p><p>“Thanks,” says Bucky, “thanks a lot, you’ve been a big help.”</p><p>Then he takes Steve by the elbow and maneuvers him out of the store, whispering in his ear as the door chimes softly behind them, “Stevie. This. This is something we could do.”</p><p>Steve looks over at him, at his happy face like a picture book open to a sunny page. “Yeah, Buck,” he says, warming to the idea, but more than anything, to the way that Bucky looks right now, excited and eager with his coat collar turned up against the late October chill and a stray curl peeking out from under the brim of his hat. “Yeah, we could.”</p>
<hr/><p>Samara had told them to come at three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, but at a quarter ‘til, they’re both standing in the hallway with their shoes on, Steve clutching the big paper bag with all the toys, ready to go. “When I go to the Tower, I always give myself a little extra time so that I won’t be late if there’s a ton of traffic,” Steve says. “I didn’t take into account that we’re going literally right next door.”</p><p>“Let’s just go,” Bucky says, “Samara will forgive us if we’re early if we promise to do the dishes or something.”</p><p>They don’t bother even going into the street, but step right over the short fence that separates their tiny front yards. Samara, holding Freja in her arms, opens the door when they ring the bell and ushers them inside. They toe their shoes off in the entryway out of habit, right as Freja screams “Buhbeebuhbeebuhbee” and throws herself into Bucky’s arms, then proceeds to blow a magnificent spit bubble which pops in his face.</p><p>Steve thrusts the bag of presents into Samara’s hands, and she glances inside and looks disgusted. “Jesus, you guys are gonna spoil her rotten. Well, don’t blame me when she’s banging down your door in a couple years looking for her pushover uncles.” Steve feels the sharp kiss of Bucky’s elbow in his ribs, and when he looks over, Bucky mouths <em>pushover uncles</em> around the grin that’s bursting out all over his face.</p><p>Samara leads them into the living room, introducing them as “Steve and James, the boys next door” to the assembled guests. There’s a woman with long, dark hair, sitting on the loveseat, and holding a glass of wine, who waves at them as Samara says, “This is Mia, my best friend since we were tiny. Practically womb to tomb.”</p><p>Mia pumps her fist and says, “Birth to earth, bitch!” Steve is a little nonplussed, but when he glances over, Bucky gives him a subtle shrug and a secret grin.</p><p>“Mia’s wife is out back entertaining their kid with a ball or something. He’s six, so none of Freja’s toys really interest him. I’m sure he’d love to meet you later, though,” she says, looking at Steve, her voice rising at the end of the sentence so that Steve knows she’s asking him if it’s okay to out him as Captain America.</p><p>He only considers for a second—if the whole neighborhood knows, what’s one more six-year-old?—before he says, “Yeah, sure, of course,” and Samara gives him a huge, grateful smile. Then she turns to a short, dark-haired man standing nervously next to the bookshelf and says, “And this is my brother, Daniel. I’ve told you about him before. History teacher, remember?”</p><p>Daniel’s obviously trying to look calm and collected, but Steve has seen that look before, and he knows that he’s trying not to shit himself in the presence of two perfectly-preserved specimens of American history. He doesn’t resent it; he knows he’d feel the same way if Norman Rockwell or Georgia O’Keeffe suddenly showed up to a party he was at, but he still feels a little awkward about it. Bucky, however, hands Freja back to Samara and grasps Daniel’s hand, shaking it vigorously.</p><p>Steve follows his lead and says, “Nice to meet you, Daniel, Samara talks about you a lot.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah,” he starts, but then Samara grabs Steve and Bucky by the arms and drags them toward the couch. “My husband Jens, I think you’ve met briefly on the sidewalk,” she says, gesturing to a tall, pale man with sandy blond hair who waves at them both, “and his parents, Signe and Martin, who have come from Denmark for the occasion. They don’t speak very much English, so…”</p><p>But Bucky interrupts her, bending over, holding out his hand and saying “Hej, hvordan går det? Jeg er James.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he jerks up in surprise, whipping his head around to look at Steve, his jaw hanging open and his face a mask of shock. “I… huh,” he says, looking consternated and a little frightened, but also a little delighted. “I guess I speak Danish.” But Signe has got ahold of his hand and is pulling him to sit down on the couch with them, talking a mile a minute and looking incredibly charmed.</p><p>Samara looks at Steve, but Steve just shrugs. They’ll talk about it later, but for right now, Bucky’s animated, laughing; it’s probably alright. “Cool,” Samara says. “Let’s just roll with it.” She passes Freja like a sack of potatoes over to Jens, who settles her on his knee and keeps talking to Bucky. “Yo, dude,” she calls to Mia, “come help me with the cake.”</p><p>Bucky is now deep in conversation about god knows what with the three Danes, which leaves Steve and Daniel standing awkwardly beside the bookshelf.</p><p>“I… I thought there’d be a lot more babies,” Steve says, trying to break the ice.</p><p>“Oh no,” Daniel says, looking relieved. “Believe it or not, one-year-olds don’t have many friends. Sam has other friends with babies, but she wanted to keep this a pretty quiet affair. Just family, you know.”</p><p><em>Just family.</em> Steve feels warm through-and-through, all the way down to his toes in his dark blue socks.</p><p>“So, history teacher, huh?” he says.</p><p>“Yeah, but, uh, I’m not gonna make it weird,” Daniel says with a defensive little shrug, looking down at his own shoes.</p><p>“I really appreciate that,” Steve says with a soft laugh. “I mean, I’d be really happy to sit down and talk someday about all that,”—he waves his hands vaguely in the air—“but…”</p><p>“But now’s not the time or the place,” Daniel finishes, and Steve feels the rest of the tension that he was holding between his shoulder blades melt away.</p><p>“Yeah.” And then, to head off what’s he’s afraid is the tsunami of inevitable questions about life in the 21st century, he says, “Teaching high school, what’s that like?”</p><p>Daniel brightens up and rubs his hands together, warming up to the subject immediately. “Well, first of all, it’s amazing, but it’s also hell on Earth…” he begins. Clearly, it was the right question to ask, and Steve is grateful to be the listener, for once.</p><p>A short while later, Samara sticks her head around the kitchen door and says, “Okay, it’s cake time, everybody, come to the table.”</p><p>They crowd into the dining room, and someone flicks off the overhead light. Samara walks carefully in from the kitchen holding a plate with a cake shaped like a monkey’s face that has one blazing candle stuck in the nose. They all sing the happy birthday song while Freja bounces in her father’s arms and waves her chubby fists like she’s in front of an orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Steve slips his hand into Bucky’s, giving it a squeeze as he listens to him sing the familiar words in his rough, lovely voice and then laugh when Freja makes a valiant, messy attempt to blow out the candle, covering the top of the cake with flecks of baby spit, which he knows they will both eat with no complaining, not even a little bit.</p>
<hr/><p>They leave soon after, but not before Steve spends ten minutes tossing a frisbee around Samara’s backyard with the six-year-old, Nico, who is only mildly impressed by Captain America out of uniform. “If only Nat could see you now,” Bucky murmurs in Steve’s ear when they’re walking about the door. “You’re a literal frisbee thrower.”</p><p>Steve elbows him in the ribs while Bucky smirks, but once they’re back in their own house, taking off their shoes and hanging up their coats, Steve watches as his façade crumbles in real time. He looks exhausted; his eyelids begin to droop and tired lines appear beside his mouth, vestiges of the smile he’s had on his face all afternoon, but with none of the joy.</p><p>“You okay?” Steve says, even though it’s obvious he’s not. But he wants Bucky to define how not-okay he is for himself.</p><p>Bucky drops his last boot into the basket under the bench and tilts over like a storm-wrested tree, resting his head on Steve’s chest, his arms dangling loosely from his shoulders between them. “Not really? I mean, I’m not really bad. But can we eat dinner soon? And then go to bed and maybe talk about it? Or maybe not.”</p><p>Steve takes half a step forward to close the space between them and pulls him into a hug, taking most of his weight as Bucky leans against him. It’s like holding up a busted punching bag; Steve has the strange feeling that Bucky’s filling is about to start spilling out. “Do you want to drink dinner tonight?” Steve asks, rubbing a big hand up and down his back, looking for the busted seam. “A smoothie with protein powder, peanut butter, bananas, yogurt, milk?”</p><p>Bucky makes a noise in the back of his throat that Steve interprets as a yes, so he half-carries half-maneuvers Bucky through the archway into the living room and onto the chaise longue. He drops like a bag of stones and sits there, elbows on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders. He’s not catatonic, he just looks tired with an extra helping of overwhelmed, so Steve feels like it’s safe to leave him sitting there and go into the kitchen to blend up dinner.</p><p>Bucky drinks his in one long, continuous gulp still sitting on the chaise longue and then sets the glass on the floor, pushes himself to his feet, and wraps his arms around Steve’s waist. He slouches a little so he can burrow his head under Steve’s chin while Steve awkwardly tries to finish his own smoothie with one hand while wrapping the other around Bucky’s shoulders. Finally, he shoves his own empty glass between the cushion and the back of the couch—the only place he can reach—and hugs Bucky properly, his arms like two iron barrel hoops holding the staves of their bodies together.</p><p>They stand like that for a while, until Steve finally says, “You want to talk about it?”</p><p>There’s a long pause, and then Bucky seems to come back from somewhere far away, some deep place inside himself that Steve can’t see, a place that Steve has never been to before. “There’s not much to say. I don’t remember how I learned Danish or why, and it didn’t bring back any bad memories or feelings. But I still feel like someone has plugged part of my brain into the wrong socket.”</p><p>Steve crooks his neck and kisses the crown of Bucky’s head, then keeps his lips pressed there and murmurs, “Do you need to call Dr. Zaidi? She’s not at work, now, but you know you can call her in an emergency.”</p><p>“No, this isn’t an emergency. I don’t even feel bad, really. I just feel like… like, you know when you can’t remember a word but it’s right there on the tip of your tongue? And you’re trying to recall it but your brain keeps dancing all around it? It feels like that, but in the opposite direction.”</p><p>“Huh,” Steve says. And then, because it’s the only thing he can think of to do, “Do you want to go to bed?” It’s still early, the sky through the windows is still a slate blue fading to navy, <em>but bedtime is what you make it</em>, he thinks.</p><p>Bucky leans back, his arms still tight around Steve’s waist, until he can look him in the eye. He’s squinting a little, his eyelids heavy with sleep and his face already wilting like an evening primrose. “Carry me?” he asks plainly, no coyness at all, and it cleaves a vast well of tenderness down through Steve’s chest, a tenderness so bright that he has to close his own eyes for a second against the glow.</p><p>“Of course,” he says. “All you gotta do is ask.” He flexes his thighs, squatting a little so that he can link his hands under the meat of Bucky’s ass and pick him up when he straightens back up again. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s neck and his legs around Steve’s narrow waist, slumping against his chest like a 200-pound bag of flour. Steve turns around and carries him through the archway, pausing to flick the hall light off with his elbow. The steps protest louder than usual at the double burden as he trudges up the stairs, then into the bedroom, where he makes a face at Crouton curled up on his pillow, and through the door to the bathroom. He sets Bucky down on the cold marble countertop and tries to back away, but Bucky whines a little, gripping him tight with his arms and legs like a liana round a mahogany tree.</p><p>“Sweetheart, we have to get ready for bed.”</p><p>“Don’t wanna,” comes the reply, and under any other circumstances, it would be cute and petulant and maybe a little annoying. But Steve understands, all of a sudden, that maybe Bucky needs to be babied tonight, something beyond being fed a liquid dinner and carried up the stairs.</p><p>“You need me to help you with everything?”</p><p>“Yeah,” comes the reply, soft and a little embarrassed.</p><p>Steve rubs his hands up and down Bucky’s back in hard, grounding strokes. “You want me to get your toothbrush ready? Or do you want me to brush your teeth for you?”</p><p>Bucky makes a noise, somehow disgusted and embarrassed and eager all at once.</p><p>“Which is it, baby?” It’s not a pet name they use much, but something about being called ‘baby’ seems to pull Bucky back to the present, if only for a moment. He says, more distinctly, “Just get it ready, please. I can do the rest.” And then, unwinding his arms and legs from around Steve and scrubbing his hands over his face, he mumbles, “Sorry, this is stupid.”</p><p>Steve pauses, Bucky’s wet toothbrush in one hand and the uncapped toothpaste in the other. “No, it’s not. You got overwhelmed this afternoon, or maybe there’s a physiological reason for why you’re feeling like this. But it’s not stupid, it’s what you need. Right?”</p><p>He stoops down a little bit to look up into Bucky’s downturned face. Bucky meets his eye and nods, and Steve hands him the toothbrush with a smear of paste on the bristles. He gets his own toothbrush out of the cup and wets it under the faucet, a little dap of paste on the end. After a minute of brushing in silence he says, fuzzily through a mouthful of foam, “You know I don’t mind doing this, right?” Bucky nods again, and he doesn’t meet Steve’s eye, but he doesn’t turn away.</p><p>“Actually,” Steve says, “you know, I love doing this. I love to take care of you, just like you take care of me.”</p><p>Bucky shifts a little on the countertop and leans over the sink to spit out the toothpaste. “That’s not true,” he says, and Steve is relieved to find that his voice is steady enough. “You don’t need to be babied like <em>this</em>.”</p><p>He slides off the counter, one leg at a time, and crowds Steve away from the sink so that he can cup his hands under the faucet and rinse his mouth. Steve meets his eye deliberately in the mirror when he straightens up again. “Maybe not exactly like this,” Steve says, “but close enough that I know how it feels. To need to cede a little control.”</p><p>Bucky moves over a little so that Steve can rinse, but he closes his eyes and stays close enough that their hips are pressed together, so that when Steve straightens back up Bucky can burrow immediately underneath his arm.</p><p>Steve looks at them in the mirror again for a moment as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Bucky is tucked under his arm, slouching so that he looks like he’s lost six inches in height. His hair is a mess, a dark tumbleweed that puffs out from the side of his head where it’s not mashed up against Steve’s armpit. His eyes are closed, his eyelids a pale, rosy pink, and the circles under his eyes are dark with fatigue. His shell-pink mouth is open a little and Steve can feel the rise and fall of his chest against his ribs. He looks both young and old at the same time, innocent, almost angelic, but ageless in some way that Steve can’t exactly pinpoint, ageless the way mountains are ageless, or minor gods.</p><p>Steve twists his head down and presses a kiss to the tumbleweed. “You want me to do your clothes?”</p><p>“Mm-hmm,” Bucky hums again, so Steve steers him out of the bathroom and across the creaky wood floor to the bed. He gently pushes Bucky so that he sits down on the bed with a soft thump and then steps into the narrow vee between his thighs and begins to unbutton Bucky’s shirt, starting at the top and working his way down.</p><p>There’s an excruciating intimacy about undressing him like this. At other times, unbuttoning Bucky’s shirt is a prelude to sex, pressing his hands close to that beloved torso, first his neck, then the curve of his broad chest, then the soft planes of his belly, and the last button, level with the zipper on his pants. Each button yielding to his nimble fingers as he works his way down, it’s undeniably erotic.</p><p>But now, all he feels is benevolent affection, a solicitous tenderness underscored by an ocean of love. The desire to take care of Bucky, to unbutton his shirt and slide his undershirt over his head so that all his hair fluffs up with static, to dress him in soft cotton and tuck him into bed, is almost overwhelming; it nearly brings him to tears.</p><p>He gets Bucky’s shirt unbuttoned and slips it off his shoulders. Underneath he’s got on the faded grey t-shirt with the NASA logo on it. Steve runs his fingers around Bucky’s soft waist until he finds the hem, and then pulls it up and over his head, tossing it towards the laundry basket in the closet without looking behind him. It hits the closet door with a soft thump and he murmurs “oops,” looking down just in time to see a small smile flit across Bucky’s face. <em>More aware than I thought</em>, he thinks.</p><p>Next, he kneels down and curls his fingers in the waistband of Bucky’s jeans. He pops the button and pulls the zipper down, then murmurs, “Lift your butt, sweetheart.” Bucky half-stands up off the bed so that Steve can pull his pants down his thighs, and then off his legs, lifting one foot at a time.</p><p>“If I turn the heat up a little, can you sleep without pajamas, or do you want me to put them on you?” he asks, still kneeling in the vee of Bucky’s legs, his hands curled around Bucky’s shins and rubbing slowly but firmly up and down his calves. Bucky slumps over a little further, curling over Steve’s head like a banana leaf, and yawns until his jaw cracks. “This is okay,” he murmurs.</p><p>Steve smiles up into his half-awake face and says, “Alright, then, hop up a second so that I can turn the blankets down.” He squeezes Bucky’s thighs just above the knee and pushes himself to his feet, holding one arm out to steady Bucky when he stands up straight and sways precariously. Then he turns down the corner of the duvet and holds it open for Bucky to slide in, tucking it around him and smoothing his hair back from his face. Bucky looks up at him, his eyes two dim smudges of charcoal in the low lamplight, and says, “Come to bed.”</p><p>“Sure thing, just let me get out of my own clothes and turn the heat up a notch.”</p><p>He shoos Crouton off of his pillow and then swats ineffectually at the cat hair before he just gives up and turns the whole pillow over, but when he finally slides under the covers in his underwear, Bucky latches on to him like an octopus trying to open a giant clam. He plasters himself to Steve’s front, both legs wrapped around Steve’s thighs, and worms his hands under Steve’s shoulders. Steve brings his arms up and clasps him tight around the ribs.</p><p>Bucky's groin is right over Steve’s hip, and he rubs his soft cock back and forth a few times, but it’s not sexual, it’s comfort he’s after, like the way he sometimes rubs the back of his foot up and down Steve’s calf as he’s falling asleep. “Thanks,” he whispers, hot, humid breath on the crook of Steve’s neck. “You always give me what I need.”</p><p>Steve feels the familiar prickle in his nose that accompanies any tender declaration from Bucky. “It’s selfish, you know. What you need is also what I need.”</p><p>“Don’t care,” Bucky mumbles, his words slurred to the point of unintelligibility, and almost immediately afterwards his breathing evens out and his body relaxes and melts into Steve’s like a pat of butter on a slice of hot toast.</p><p>Steve’s not tired at all, or at least he didn’t think he was, but it doesn’t take long for the warmth and the weight of Bucky pressing him down into the mattress to turn down the dial of his own consciousness, and he falls asleep without even noticing it.</p>
<hr/><p>The last week of October, they’re lying in bed, post-debriefing, Bucky on his left side with his metal arm tucked up under his pillow and his human fingers marking his place in the <em>The Name of the Rose</em>. Steve is wrapped around him from behind, one long leg slung over his thighs, one arm around his waist. His fingers are tucked into the waistband of Bucky’s plaid pajama pants, palm cupping his soft lower belly. It’s a habit that has developed seemingly without the permission of his waking mind, this constant need to keep ahold of Bucky when he’s asleep. As soon as he starts to drop off, his fingers grope around of their own accord and wedge themselves under Bucky’s waistband, up his sleeve, or even in his pocket, if his pajamas have them. Sometimes Steve wakes up in the morning and finds himself all the way across the king-sized bed from Bucky, the space between them bridged by his long arm, his fingers curled tight into the elastic of Bucky’s boxers.</p><p>Bucky, for his part, says it’s cute, so Steve doesn’t try to do anything to curb the urge to take and hold and keep close. Now he’s mumbling into the short hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck, “Remind me tomorrow to pick up the wigs.” They’ve been talking about the costumes that they’re putting together for Maria and Natasha.</p><p>“Sure thing, sweetheart.” Bucky murmurs. “Now go to sleep and let me read.”</p><p>Steve nuzzles the back of his neck and the long ridge of muscle that stands out taut when he bends his head. He hears the gentle creak of the spine as Bucky opens the book again, and is vaguely aware, as he drifts into unconsciousness, of Bucky stretching a leg out and then whispering, “Oops, sorry,” when Crouton says <em>mrrp?</em>, irked at being jostled at the foot of the bed.</p><p>All of a sudden, his phone rings, strident and alarming in the dark, quiet bedroom. Crouton shoots off the bed and scrabbles into the bathroom to hide behind the toilet while Bucky bolts upright and Steve scrubs a hand over his face, groaning like he’s in mortal pain.</p><p>“Is that the Avengers?” Bucky gasps, his hand over his heart.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s the Avengers,” Steve says, reaching out to pick the phone up and thumb the slider to accept the call. “Yeah?”</p><p>“It’s Nat,” comes a voice from the other end. “It’s an emergency. Wheels up in forty-five minutes, hope you weren’t in the middle of anything.” Even with the undercurrent of tension running through her voice, he can hear her smirking.</p><p>“Nope, I had just dropped off to sleep.”</p><p>“Hmm, too bad,” she says. “Pack a bag, we don’t know how long we’re gonna be gone. You know the drill.”</p><p>“Sure,” he sighs. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”</p><p>He hangs up and his shoulders slump. Bucky’s looking at him worriedly. “Is it a long-haul thing?”</p><p>“Looks like it,” he says, running his fingers through his hair. “I need to take some changes of clothes.”</p><p>“I can do the packing for you. Why don’t you go ahead and get suited up?” Bucky’s already out of bed, his book lying face-down and forgotten. He goes into the bathroom to gather up Steve’s toothbrush and shaving kit, and Steve can hear him murmuring to Crouton, “It’s okay, buddy, it was only the phone. But it’s gonna be just you and me for a little while, so if you wanna come back to bed, I’ll let you sleep on the other pillow.”</p><p>“I heard that,” Steve says, but he can’t bring himself to really make a joke out of it. God, he hates this so much. He hates leaving Bucky like this, hates the uncertainty, the worry. The fear. He can take care of himself, and he’s not half as reckless as he used to be, but he knows that Bucky won’t sleep until he comes back home again. <em>Just for a little longer</em>, he thinks.</p><p>They reconvene at the front door, Steve stuffing dusty protein bars into the already overstuffed duffel, Bucky standing hunched over with his hands tucked into his armpits.</p><p>Steve looks at him, standing stooped and miserable in his bare feet. He drops his bag with a sigh and envelops Bucky in the biggest hug he can manage, wrapping his arms around his back as Bucky brings his own arms up to be squished between them. Not wanting to hold, at the moment, just to be held.</p><p>“I love you,” Steve says into his hair. It’s still long enough on top to bury his nose in, a faint whiff of orange blossoms left over from his morning shower. “Miss you already.”</p><p>Bucky brings his arms up from between them to encircle Steve’s neck. “I love you, too.”</p><p>They stand there for another minute before Bucky pulls away and says, “You’re gonna be late if you don’t get a move on.”</p><p>Steve leans forward and kisses him, once, twice, not softly, but not trying to start something, either. Just trying to make it count.</p><p>“I’ll send you a message when I’m on the quinjet just to let you know if comms will be blacked out or what, and to give you a timeframe.” He opens the door, a draft of cold air flowing into the hall.</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says, following him outside. He grabs Steve by the arm before he can walk down the steps and kisses him again. “I love you. Be safe. Come home.”</p><p>Steve’s resolve almost deserts him then and there, but he forces himself to walk down to the yard, unlock his bike, and wheel it out through the front gate. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” he calls, before he puts on his helmet and turns the key in the ignition.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky grumbles, rolling his eyes and ignoring the response that Steve is fishing for. But his mouth is quirked up on one side, and he blows Steve a kiss as he turns into the street and drives away.</p>
<hr/><p>It’s not a milk run, not by any means, but it’s not fighting aliens hell-bent on taking over the planet, either. SHIELD had received word that some remnants of AIM were holed up in an abandoned mine in the wilds of Alberta, trying to fabricate a biological weapon that would, if they were successful, be used to turn the whole northeast into a bargaining chip with the US government. The most recent intel had indicated that the scientists working for AIM were closer to success than anyone had suspected in the months of covert ops leading up to this mission, which is why the Avengers’ emergency protocol had been activated.</p><p>They’ve cleared the lower levels, incapacitated the guards and rounded up the scientists for SHIELD to deal with later. Steve and Natasha are walking back through a shaft entrance into an already-cleared stope in the highest level of the mine when Steve sees, out of the corner of his eye, a tiny, blinking red light hidden behind a jut in the ceiling over his head.</p><p>He grabs Natasha by her utility belt and heaves with all his might, throwing her halfway across the room. When the roof of the mine shaft explodes, Steve ducks his head under his shield to protect his face from any debris, but it’s not enough. Something knocks him down and everything goes black.</p>
<hr/><p>“Steve? <em>Steve? </em>Oh shit, oh fuck,” he hears Natasha say from far away. It sounds like she’s shouting at him from across a wide, slow river.</p><p>“Tony, get over here and push this thing off him <em>now</em>,” he hears her snap, faintly. From the other side of the river he recognizes the whine of Tony’s repulsors, and a crash as whatever had fallen on top of him is tipped away.</p><p>“Nat, he’s gonna… tourniquet... uniform.” The river seems to be growing ever wider, or maybe they’re stuck on the bank while he’s in a boat, drifting downstream with the current. It’s getting harder and harder to make out what the others are saying over the noise of the rushing water. He tries to sit up, but the signals from his brain get lost somewhere.</p><p>“Hurry,” he hears, so far in the distance as to be almost indiscernible. “<em>Hurry</em>.”</p>
<hr/><p>[1 missed call from Stark, Tony @5:35 p.m. 28 October 2015]</p><p>[1 missed call from Stark, Tony @5:48 p.m. 28 October 2015]</p><p>[1 missed call from Stark, Tony @5:57 p.m. 28 October 2015]</p><p>[1 missed call from Stark, Tony @6:01 p.m. 28 October 2015]</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Captain: Ahoy, you in the crow's nest! Have you seen any more sign o' that plot?<br/>Lookout: Well, sir, there seems to be- <em>*ship falls off the edge of the Earth*</em></p><p>DISCLAIMER: I don't speak Danish. Google translate is to blame for Bucky's mistakes; I am merely the conduit</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. November</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh, hello, it's a MONDAY SURPRISE!!</p><p>Soundtrack for this chapter: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93ywiGMDnQ">INXS - Need You Tonight</a></p><p>CW: Medical stuff in the first two scenes, nothing graphic</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve opens his eyes to a diffuse fluorescent light filtering through frosted glass and a dropped ceiling made of pitted grey tiles. He closes his eyes again, and that’s when the pain starts leaking into the peripheries of his perception. Everything hurts. His chest hurts, his hips hurt, his legs hurt. Breathing hurts, blinking hurts, thinking hurts. He tries to take a deep breath but it ends in a weak cough, and all of a sudden there’s a shadow over the bed that resolves, slowly, into Bucky’s beloved face, creased with worry.</p><p>“Steve,” he breathes, “you’re awake.” He looks like death warmed over, and Steve’s first instinct is to surge up and cup his face, kiss, him, check him for injuries, find out what’s wrong. But as soon as he tries to sit up, his body lights up with pain like a blown-out transformer, like someone has connected a power strip to a power strip to a power strip, and the last power strip is connected to his spine.</p><p>He hisses through his teeth and Bucky says, “Jesus, Steve, don’t move! You’re being held together with spit and glue right now. If you move, you’re gonna fall apart.” He’s pressing down on Steve’s left shoulder, gently but firmly, and Steve is relieved to realize that that, at least, doesn’t hurt.</p><p>“What happened? Where the fuck am I?”</p><p>Bucky sighs, moving out of Steve’s field of vision. He hears the sound of a chair being dragged across a tile floor, and Bucky reappears at his side and holds up a cup of water with a straw. “Drink some of this, first. They’ve had you on IV fluids for the last three days, but I bet your mouth is dry.”</p><p>It is. “Three days?” he asks, shocked and disoriented. “So it’s…”</p><p>“November 1st, mid-afternoon. You’re on the medical floor at the Tower.”</p><p>“Christ. I’ve been out for three days? What happened to me? I remember we were in the mine, and then I was opening my eyes here.”</p><p>Bucky sets the cup down on the bedside table, scoots his chair forward a little more, and settles his forehead on Steve’s pillow, closing his eyes. His hands are fisted in the sheet that’s covering Steve up to his neck, the metal hand opening and closing spasmodically. When he speaks again, his voice is flat and devoid of emotion, muffled in the pillow.</p><p>“There was an explosion, do you remember that?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says weakly.</p><p>“It knocked a huge chunk of rock out of the ceiling of the mine shaft and it fell on you, on your right side. Broke your collarbone, crushed your ribs, punctured your lung, cracked your pelvis in three places, and broke your femur. Shattered your femur, actually. You almost bled out. You would have if Nat hadn’t been so quick with the tourniquet.” He sounds like he’s reciting the day’s stock market overview. Steve starts to get worried.</p><p>“Buck…”</p><p>“You had half a dozen surgeries in first two days, you’re on oxygen,”—Steve notices, for the first time, that there’s plastic tubing in his nose—“there are pins in your femur, which the serum hasn’t rejected yet, contrary to everyone’s expectations, but you’re gonna have to have another surgery in the next few days to get them out before your body starts trying to push them out, wrong way first.”</p><p>“Bucky…” Steve reaches over his with left hand, shaking the sheet off, and squeezes Bucky’s shoulder, but he just keeps on talking, like an automaton.</p><p>“Your ribs and your pelvis have more or less knit back together, but you’re probably still in pain. The doctor said you would be for a while yet. They’ve been keeping you under to help your body heal, but since you can breathe on your own again and probably sit up without damaging something, they decided to taper off your meds this morning. Actually, we were expecting you to wake up around lunchtime, but I guess you just weren’t ready yet.”</p><p>“Bucky, look at me. Please,” he begs.</p><p>“Steve,” Bucky whispers into the pillow, his voice just a vibration through the foam core. “I can’t.”</p><p>Steve opens his mouth to say something, anything, but at that moment the door opens and a doctor in a lab coat comes in, followed by Natasha and Clint.</p><p>“Well, well, well, look who’s decided to grace us with consciousness,” Natasha says with a smile that’s too soft to be a smirk.</p><p>Steve opens his mouth again, but Bucky bolts to his feet, staggering a little bit as he rounds the end of the bed, and mumbles, “’Scuse me,” before pushing past Clint and disappearing through the open door.</p><p>Natasha gives Clint a look and makes a complicated hand signal, motioning toward the open door; he nods and disappears. When she turns around again and looks at Steve, he can feel the telltale sting of impending tears, so he settles his head back down on the pillow and closes his eyes, biting his lip to keep from crying. It doesn’t help; it barely even registers in the cacophony of pain that is his body right now, and he hears Natasha ask the doctor to give them a minute.</p><p>When he hears the door close and the lock click into place, he’s suddenly hit by a wave of exhaustion that rolls over him like thunder. He can feel tears running down his face, pooling in the hollows of his ears, but he can’t summon the energy to raise his good hand and brush them away. “Nat. ‘S Bucky okay?” he says, his voice slurring a little.</p><p>Natasha comes around the foot of the bed and sits down in the abandoned chair, reaching up to grasp his left hand where it’s lying slack on his chest. With her other hand she pulls a crumpled kleenex out of her pocket and gently dries off his face.</p><p>“He’s fine. Or, he’ll be fine. He’s had a really difficult couple of days.” She gives him a small, sad smile.</p><p>“He told me what happened.”</p><p>“Yeah, it was pretty bad. Thought we were gonna lose you. You were stable by the time we got you back here, to the Tower, but Tony made the mistake of calling Bucky on the way back, so he was here when we arrived and he saw you before we could get you into the operating room.”</p><p>Steve winces. “Fuck.”</p><p>“Yeah.” She tosses the damp kleenex into the trashcan and looks down at their hands crossed over his chest. “I thought maybe he was gonna freak out, but he went into Winter Soldier mode. You know, just shut down. Silent, tense, blank eyes with nobody behind them. He refused to leave the floor, stayed standing outside the operating room like a statue until they finished, and then came up here to the recovery room, where he’s basically been ever since.”</p><p>Steve closes his eyes. He wants to cry again, he feels the sadness well up in his chest, but it seems like more tears are a step farther than his body can go right now. “Fuck,” he whispers again.</p><p>“Don’t worry, we’ve been taking care of him, forcing him to eat, shower, change clothes, that kind of thing. The day after we got back, I called his SHIELD therapist and made him meet with her in one of the empty conference rooms downstairs. Almost had to force him at gunpoint, but they were in there for three hours, and when she left, he seemed a lot better. The Winter Soldier was gone, at any rate.”</p><p>Steve nods; he’s so tired that the pain has almost faded into the background, exhaustion like a thick, muffling fog twining round his synapses. He’s not going to be able to stay awake for much longer.</p><p>“What about… Crouton?” he says, fading fast.</p><p>Natasha smiles. “He’s in good hands. Your neighbor Samara dropped in when Clint went over to get some clothes for Bucky. Apparently, she’d been really worried because Bucky had been eating dinner at her house when Tony called, and he’d run out in a blind panic without waiting to explain anything. So when she saw Clint go inside your house, she followed him to ask if everything was okay. Clint was going to take Crouton back to his place, but she said that she’d look after him, instead.”</p><p>“Good,” Steve whispers. He can’t seem to hold his eyes open for longer than it takes to blink, but he feels Natasha squeeze his hand.</p><p>“I’ll tell Dr. Cho that you need a few more hours, okay? You still need a lot of tests and one more minor surgery, but we can probably get you out of here and into a real bed tomorrow. And Bucky will be fine, now that he doesn’t have to be worried about you anymore.”</p><p>“Wait.” Steve forces his eyes open, makes himself focus on Natasha. She’s standing up now, but she looks down at him with an expression of soft concern. “Wait. I don’t want him to worry anymore. I mean,” he takes a deep breath, ignoring the knife edge of pain that lances down his side. “I can’t wait any longer to quit. This is the last time this is ever gonna happen.”</p><p>Natasha reaches down and cups his cheek, her expression softer than he’s ever seen before. “Okay, Steve. Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. I’ll set up a meeting for you with Fury for next week so that you can make it official. But it’s all going to be okay.”</p><p>“Thanks,” he whispers, and the last thing he hears is the door closing softly behind her.</p>
<hr/><p>The next time he opens his eyes goes the same as the first time; pitted dropped-ceiling tiles, diffuse fluorescent light, everything hurts. But less, he thinks. It’s a duller pain, more like a migraine and less like his bones all screaming in agony. It’s easier to think, too, and all of a sudden, he’s aware of the smell of orange blossoms underlying the sharp stink of industrial disinfectants and off-gassing plastic. He turns his head over on the pillow and sees Bucky sprawled out in the uncomfortable-looking hospital chair, slouched down so that his torso is practically vertical on the seat, his long legs stuck out straight in front of him and his feet disappearing under the bed. His head is lolling to one side, his pink mouth parted sweetly, his pale eyelids closed against the room’s low light.</p><p>Steve takes a moment just to look at him, his be-all and end-all. “Hey, Buck?” he whispers.</p><p>Bucky immediately bolts upright in the chair, going from sleep to a high state of alertness in no time, far quicker than he ever does at home. “Steve,” he says with a sigh. “You’re awake.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, looking at Bucky’s guarded expression, and god, he really hates that. So he says, “Hey, c’mere,” and makes grabby hands until Bucky scoots his chair up next to the bed.</p><p>“No,” Steve says, “I mean, come <em>here</em>.” He grabs Bucky by the arm and tugs.</p><p>“I’m not gonna fit up there with you,” Bucky says, eyeing the bed, and then Steve, apprehensively.</p><p>“Well, it’s either that or we both go on the floor,” Steve says with as much finality as he can muster. </p><p>“Steve,” Bucky begins, but Steve cuts him off.</p><p>“No, don’t start. I almost died and my body hurts and I feel like shit and I just want you to cuddle me. Please?” He knows he’s playing dirty, but he doesn’t care.</p><p>Bucky purses his lips disapprovingly, but huffs out a breath through his nose and says, “Okay, but if Dr. Cho comes in and catches us, I’m blaming you.”</p><p>“Fine, okay, great, just lie down and hold me.”</p><p>Bucky toes off his shoes and slowly lowers his weight down on the bed. It creaks alarmingly, but doesn’t snap shut on them like a carnivorous plant, so he stretches his legs out, cocking one knee over Steve’s unbroken femur and resting his head on the pillow. He presses up against Steve’s side and gingerly drapes his metal arm over the left side of his chest. Steve lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and melts into the long, warm line of Bucky’s body against his. “You know what,” he says, “I read somewhere one time that cats purr at a frequency that is proven to help injuries heal and bones knit back together.”</p><p>Bucky makes an interested noise. “Maybe we should get Crouton down here.”</p><p>“No, I was thinking that that’s what it feels like to have you plastered up against me. I can feel myself getting better faster.”</p><p>“Stevie,” Bucky whispers, and moves his hand up to stroke Steve’s cheek. “I’m real sorry about earlier.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Steve says, without malice. “Don’t apologize. I know what you’ve gone through this last week.”</p><p>Bucky nods minutely and presses even closer to Steve’s side. Steve’s good arm is trapped between their bodies, and he wiggles his fingers for a minute before he can work them under the hem of Bucky’s hoodie and get them hooked into the waistband of his jeans. Against the backs of his fingers, the soft, silken skin of Bucky’s waist is blood hot, the secret hollow where his belly meets his hip like an incubator for all of Steve’s love.</p><p>“I talked to Nat when she was here,” Steve says. “I’m… I’m done. I’m gonna get out. No more waiting. We’re never doing this again, okay?”</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky whispers, almost imperceptible.</p><p>“When they let me out of here, the first thing I’m gonna do is go down to SHIELD to hand in my resignation. Effective immediately.”</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky whispers again. They lie still and silent, listening to the inconspicuous whirr of the ventilation system and the occasional muffled footstep passing by outside.</p><p>“I should probably call Dr. Cho,” Bucky says after a while. “I’m sure she’s just champing at the bit to come in and poke and prod you some more.”</p><p>“Mmm,” Steve hums, closing his eyes and wiggling his hips experimentally. It doesn’t hurt, or at least not any more than everything already hurts, anyway. “I’d rather you poked and prodded me, instead.”</p><p>Bucky barks out a startled laugh and sits up, dangling his legs over the side of the bed. “Jesus christ, Steven, if we fuck right now you are definitely gonna rebreak something. Have a little common sense, for fuck’s sake.”</p><p>“It’s your fault, Buck. It’s ‘cause you forgot to take all the stupid with you when you left for the war.” He squeezes Bucky’s thigh with his good hand, high up near his hip bone.</p><p>Bucky gives him that look, the fondly exasperated one that says <em>you’re my favorite idiot</em>, and hops to his feet. “Okay, I could <em>maybe</em> be talked into blowing you later. As in, the day after tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow if you’re real sweet about it. Now forget I said that, otherwise you’re gonna embarrass yourself in front of the good doctor.”</p><p>Steve whines petulantly and Bucky shoots him a devilish grin before he slips out the door and disappears.</p>
<hr/><p>The next day, Dr. Cho takes the pins out of his femur. Surprisingly, it’s not an unpleasant experience. She only gives him local anesthesia because the massive amounts of drugs that it took to knock him out completely for three days had depleted their supply, so, under her disapproving eye, Bucky pours Steve a few shots of Asgardian hooch and then sits next to the bed in scrubs, reading aloud <em>Peter and Wendy</em>, their perennial favorite. Steve floats high on an ethanol cloud and gazes at him, watching his eyes, pale blue like porcelain with a rich overglaze, as they slide back and forth over the page. His voice is low and rough, but he’s a superb reader, doing all the parts: the warm and affectionate Mrs. Darling, the roaring, peevish Mr. Darling, and Wendy, John, and Michael, changing the timbre of his voice to set them apart from each other.</p><p>Bucky gets to the very last line of the second chapter—“So as soon as the door of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs. Darling there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out: ‘Now, Peter!’”—when Dr. Cho interrupts.</p><p>“My dad used to actually scream out that line,” she says to his right. “Scared me to death every time.” Steve looks over at her, realizing with a start that the surgery is over, the instruments have been carried away, and his leg is wrapped up nice and snug, only throbbing a little bit under the bandage.</p><p>“Are… are we done?” he asks, bemused. The buzz from the liquor is entirely gone, but he’d been so caught up in the story that he might as well have been blind drunk, for all the notice he took of his surroundings.</p><p>She smiles at him, cocking an eyebrow. “Well, if that’s how you react to <em>Peter Pan</em>, next time we’re going to try <em>Wind in the Willows</em>. Much cheaper than the gallons and gallons of sedative we’ve poured into you in the last four days.”</p><p>“Well, somebody else can do it,” Bucky grumbles. His voice is hoarse and he clears his throat a few times before stealing Steve’s bottle of water.</p><p>“I’m not sure it’ll have the same effect if somebody else does it,” Dr. Cho says, and winks at Steve. “Anyway, you’re all set, but you need to keep off that leg for the next few days. I’m authorizing you to move back to your quarters here at the Tower, but you’re going to get there in a wheelchair, and if I see you around here tomorrow without crutches, I won’t be responsible for my actions.” She narrows her eyes at Steve, and he quails a little under the weight of her frown.</p><p>“Yes, ma’am,” he says.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Bucky pipes up, “I’ll sit on him if I have to.”</p><p>“Good,” she says, and, before the door closes behind her, “I’ll send a nurse in with the wheelchair in a minute.”</p><p>There’s a moment of silence, and then Bucky says, “Don’t say it. Steve. I swear to god. I can see it on your face. Don’t do it.”</p><p>Steve tries to stifle a giggle, but it comes out through his nose as a snort, instead. “Sit on me, huh?” he says, and flinches with a laugh as Bucky whacks him carefully on the good shoulder with <em>Peter and Wendy</em>, and it’s a hardback, too.</p>
<hr/><p>The next day, Steve does nothing but loll around on the couch, alternating between flipping through the unbelievable eight hundred cable channels that appear on the TV, fielding visits from all of the other Avengers and Avengers-adjacent personnel, taking turns reading more of <em>Peter and Wendy</em> with Bucky, and trying to sleep in a bed that is too soft, with weird blankets that smell like the wrong detergent.</p><p>“I wanna go home,” he complains that evening into Bucky’s hair, where he’s stuck his nose to try and mask the wrong-detergent smell. They’re lying in the big, fluffy bed, both of them stark naked. Bucky refuses to fool around, not even a little bit, but Steve had finally convinced him that he wasn’t going to try to push the issue, that he only wanted a little bit of skin contact. It’s grounding, somehow, to have all that warm skin pressed up against his side, Bucky’s delicious-smelling head on his chest, his soft belly pressing into Steve’s hip. Their legs are tangled together and he’s absentmindedly rubbing the tops of his toes back and forth across Steve’s good ankle.</p><p>“Just a few more days. You need to be able to sit in a car all the way back to Brooklyn, at least.”</p><p>“I can sit in a car, I’ve been sitting on the couch all day!”</p><p>Bucky lifts himself up on one elbow so that he can look down into Steve’s face. He looks so puckish with his lips quirked up and his bright curls spilling down around his forehead that Steve just wants to take his face in his hands and chase the kiss that’s hidden, like Mrs. Darling’s, in the corner of his mouth. But he made a promise, no trying to start any funny business before Dr. Cho gives them the A-OK, so he settles for pinching the lobe of Bucky’s ear, instead.</p><p>“Steve, I’m not the only one who almost lost you, you know.”</p><p>Steve’s eyebrows pull together over the bridge of his nose. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“I mean that I think your friends would like to make sure that you’re mostly better before we disappear back into the wilds of Brooklyn again.”</p><p>“But they can come visit any time,” Steve protests. “It’s not like we live in Jersey!”</p><p>Bucky rolls his eyes. “That’s not the point. The point is that they love you, and you almost died, so if it’s not too much trouble, we should stick around here for a little while longer so that they can try to take care of you, too. It might do something to help mitigate the trauma of watching you bleed out on the quinjet floor.”</p><p>“Oh,” Steve says softly. “I never thought about it that way.”</p><p>“Yeah, I can tell,” Bucky says with a soft laugh. “You’re so conditioned to taking care of other people that you never recognize when it’s being turned back in your face. But what did you think they all came here for, today? Did you think that Nat and Clint showed up with beer and cookies and enough vareniki to feed a platoon just because they wanted to hang out?”</p><p>“I…” Steve starts, but Bucky talks right over him.</p><p>“And all of those flowers from Pepper and that hilarious grabby claw that Tony whipped up for you so that you wouldn’t have to move to get the remote?”</p><p>He runs his fingers through Steve’s hair, brushing it back off his forehead. “You told me once, through the door, back in when I was in SHIELD, that they were your family. So let them be your family. Let them do what me and your ma spent so much time doing when you were sick as a kid.”</p><p>“Okay,” Steve whispers, his eyes filling with tears. Bucky brushes them away gently and kisses his wet cheeks and lays his head back down on Steve’s chest.</p><p>“And anyway,” Bucky continues, “I’ve got a nice little side hustle going on here, ‘cause you’re the one who’s injured, but I’m reaping the benefits of all this free food and special attention.”</p><p>Steve pinches him lightly on the side and gets pinched back for his trouble. “You’re terrible, I love you,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of Bucky’s head. Bucky hums in satisfaction and wiggles a little closer to Steve’s side, as if he would wiggle all the way inside him, if he could.</p>
<hr/><p>They stay in the Tower for three more days, and Steve is subjected to a constant rotation of visitors, take-out, and good-natured ribbing. He holds up under the care and attention awfully well, surprising both Bucky and himself. On the second day, as Steve is finishing his breakfast, it suddenly occurs to him that they’re halfway through the first week of November, and that he’d missed out on Halloween entirely.</p><p>“Hey,” he says to Bucky, who’s sitting across from him at the kitchen table, doing the crossword in the paper with a ballpoint pen like some kind of show-off. “What ended up happening on Halloween? Was there a party?”</p><p>Bucky looks up and taps his pen against his chin. “Yeah, but I didn’t go.” He grins sheepishly. “I was, uh, too busy freaking out and never leaving your bedside and stuff like that.”</p><p>Steve reaches his hand across the table and grasps Bucky’s metal hand, lying relaxed on the table beside the paper, giving his wrist a squeeze. “It probably wasn’t much fun anyway, not if everyone was still recovering from the mission.”</p><p>Bucky turns his hand over and tickles Steve’s palm with his cool fingers. “I think they just got pretty drunk and played a lot of Mario Kart. At least that’s what Clint said.” Then he frowns down at the paper and says, “What was Pip’s surname in <em>Great Expectations</em>? I know you’ve read that book half a dozen times.”</p><p>“Uh,” Steve says. “Pirrip. Two R’s.”</p><p>Bucky blows him a kiss and goes back to his crossword, tapping his pen against his nose, the tip of his tongue just hidden in the corner of his mouth like a strawberry under a leaf. Steve resists the urge to lean over the table and bite it.</p><p>“Did we ever get costumes in the end?” he wonders out loud, after a minute.</p><p>“What?” Bucky looks up, then shakes his head and visibly brightens. “Oh yeah, we did, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. Really good ones, too. Yours was really simple, but mine was great.” He tosses his pen down and pushes his chair back from the table. “I’m gonna go put it on now. You’re gonna love it.”</p><p>Steve’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. “I’m gonna love it, huh? Is it like my costume from last year? Is it gonna make me break my promise not to start any funny business?”</p><p>“Ew, no,” Bucky says, wrinkling his nose. He disappears into the hall and Steve can hear him opening the door of the bedroom closet. “You’re gonna love it,” he says again, “but there ain’t nothing sexy about it.” After a pause, during which Steve can hear the sound of a long zipper being pulled up or down, he says, “At least, I hope not.”</p><p>There are some more muffled noises, and then, “Close your eyes.”</p><p>Eyes closed, Steve can hear him come back down to the hall and into the kitchen, his bare feet almost silent on the hardwood floor but accompanied by the strange, muted <em>swish swish </em>of some unidentifiable textile.</p><p>“Okay, you can open your eyes now.”</p><p>Bucky is wearing a baggy, furry, tiger-print jumpsuit with a white belly, a long, black-tipped tail slung over the crook of his arm, and a hood with two round, black ears. It’s zipped up to his neck, and a few of his loose curls have escaped from the hood and are hanging down over his forehead. Steve can practically feel his eyes turn into hearts.</p><p>“Oh my god,” he sighs, “that is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire fucking life.”</p><p>Bucky bares his teeth and growls dangerously, and Steve’s heart melts into a puddle and pools in his socks. “Stop,” he whines, “I can’t take it, it’s too cute. It physically pains me to look at you right now.”</p><p>“I also got an eyeliner pencil in the box to draw on whiskers and blacken my nose, but I didn’t think I needed to go the whole nine yards today.”</p><p>“Aarrgh,” Steve groans, clutching at his chest. “Thank god, I really don’t think I could handle you being any more adorable than you already are. You’re killing me, Buck.”</p><p>Bucky grins, happy and satisfied, and slides back into his chair.</p><p>“So you’re a tiger, huh? And what was I gonna be?”</p><p>“I’m not just any tiger, Steve, I’m Hobbes. And you had some red Converse and black pants and a red striped shirt, and some gel to spike your hair, ‘cause you were gonna be Calvin.” Bucky picks up his pen again and furrows his brow at his crossword.</p><p>“Fuck, that’s genius. Who thought of that?” Steve marvels softly.</p><p>“I don’t know, but I want to thank them for it. This jumpsuit is really comfortable.” His tongue is back in the corner of his mouth again and Steve thinks his heart is actually about to give up the ghost.</p><p>“Are you gonna keep it on all day?”</p><p>Bucky shrugs without looking up. “I dunno. It’s nice.”</p><p>“I might actually die of heart failure if you do,” Steve says, massaging his chest, where he has an actual, physical pain. “But I can probably hold out for another few hours.”</p>
<hr/><p>“Well, gentlemen,” Fury says, considering them impassively from across the vast expanse of his desk, “Romanova said there’s something you wanted to talk about.”</p><p>It’s the end of the week, and Steve and Bucky are ready to go back to Brooklyn, but for the last thing Steve has to do—tender his resignation to Fury. He’s more-or-less better, although his leg still aches and his ribs hurt if he breathes too deeply, and, despite Dr. Cho’s A-OK, the one attempt they’d made that morning at having proper sex was cut short when they couldn’t find a position that didn’t make Steve’s pelvis shriek in pain.</p><p>(“Why isn’t this all fixed yet?” he had whined petulantly. “The serum’s really falling down on the job.”</p><p>“Steve, don’t blame the serum, blame the fact that that rock turned your bones into those crumbs you find in the bottom of a bag of chips. And be a little more patient, for fuck’s sake,” Bucky had said, swatting him on the thigh and then immediately moving to swallow his cock down so that Steve forgot that he had had anything to complain about in the first place.)</p><p>“Yes, there is,” Steve says. He’s a little nervous, but it’s helping a lot that Bucky is sitting in the uncomfortable chair next to him, subtly but firmly pressing their knees together.</p><p>Steve unzips his backpack and pulls out a manila envelope, which he slides across the desk. Fury opens the flap and pulls out a piece of paper, printed on one side, and looks it over impassively. Pepper had helped Steve to draw up his letter of resignation and had gotten her team of sharp-eyed lawyers to look it over, but it still makes something small and nervous flutter in the pit of his stomach as he waits for Fury’s reaction.</p><p>Eventually, Fury pushes the paper carelessly to the side and says, “I see.”</p><p>They all sit there in silence for a minute, Fury staring at Steve with narrowed eyes, Steve getting increasingly nervous but maintaining eye contact, and Bucky increasing the pressure of his knee against Steve’s until it becomes something almost painful, but absolutely necessary.</p><p>Finally, Fury leans back and says, managing somehow to avoid looking like he has capitulated in any way, “So. You’re resigning. No more Avenging, no more SHIELD.”</p><p>Steve nods, trying to look as impassive and sure of himself as possible.</p><p>“Mind giving me some explanation?”</p><p>His tone is blunt, just shy of outright rudeness, and Steve bristles against his better judgement. All of his nervousness vanishes as the little spark of anger that he hides in the press of his knee against Bucky’s flares to life.</p><p>“Fury,” he starts, but then an idea occurs to him. “Wait. Am I talking to you as the director of SHIELD or as a colleague and a… a friend?”</p><p>He can feel Bucky’s surprise in the subtle jerk of his leg, but Fury looks at him for a moment more, the expression on his face carved from granite, before he rolls his eyes and says, “Whatever you want, Cap.”</p><p>“Well, then,” Steve says tentatively, “as the director of SHIELD, it’s none of your business. I owe you no explanation. But as a colleague and a… and a friend, I’m quitting because I’ve been fighting for too long. I want to do something else, see if there’s something else I can make out of my life.”</p><p>“You don’t think that the life you’ve led so far has been worthwhile enough? You must have some pretty high standards, Cap,” Fury says, a sarcastic curl to his upper lip that would be a sneer if it went any higher.</p><p>Steve can sense Bucky’s indignation as easily as if they shared one mind between them, so he reaches over and squeezes his knee lightly. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I have been in this business for longer than you have, Nick, and I’m tired, and I want out.” Fury opens his mouth to speak, but Steve holds up his other hand and continues, “No, it’s not that I want out, it’s that I’m getting out, and that’s that.”</p><p>“And that’s that,” Fury echoes, his mouth set in a thin, grim line.</p><p>“Yes,” Steve says decisively. “Two weeks’ notice, and as Dr. Cho has discharged me with three weeks of sick leave to recover, that leaves me with one week of leave over and above the remaining two that I owe to SHIELD. So when I walk out of this building today, I’m not coming back.”</p><p>Fury’s expression doesn’t change from one of stern impassivity, but there’s an amused glint in his eye.</p><p>“Although,” Steve continues, “there are some other things we need to talk about today, too.” He glances at Bucky out of the corner of his eye, unable to stop himself. Bucky is sitting as straight as the low-slung chair will allow him, taciturn and seemingly unaffected, but Steve knows that he’s still eerily good at controlling his face when he wants to.</p><p>“We want to know what progress has been made on Bucky’s new identity and how my resignation is going to affect that.”</p><p>Fury looks briefly disgusted. “I’m not happy about this, Cap, not by a long shot, but I won’t hold your resignation over Sergeant Barnes’s head. What he chooses to do with himself after you quit is up to him.” Here, he looks over at Bucky and cocks his eyebrow. Bucky continues to stare back at him stoically, looking, if not for the defiant gleam in his eye, as if he hadn’t heard a word.</p><p>“As far as Sergeant Barnes’s identity goes, we need another few weeks. I’ll call you when the paperwork is ready. Now. As for what you two <em>supersoldiers</em>”—he emphasizes the word in a way that makes Steve’s skin crawl—“are going to do now, I have an offer to make.”</p><p>“I didn’t come here to entertain counteroffers,” Steve says, letting his annoyance show in his voice. “I came here to quit. My decision is final. I won’t fight for SHIELD again, and not the Avengers, either.”</p><p>“Not even if it was another Battle of New York?” Fury asks quietly.</p><p>Steve compresses his lips into a thin line. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”</p><p>Fury considers him for another moment before leaning forward and clasping his hands over his desk. “Don’t get your panties in a wad, Cap, this is something different. You’re quitting, Tony’s getting old, Thor is off planet half the time, and Natasha is her own independent woman who don’t need no oversight. The Avengers need new blood. You all are the old guard now, and it’s time to freshen things up a little bit.”</p><p>Steve narrows his eyes, feels the muscles in Bucky’s thigh tighten against his. Fury looks back and forth between them before he continues. “Now, with that in mind, the Avengers, in conjunction with SHIELD, are thinking about creating a new program to recruit and train other enhanced individuals.”</p><p>“Other enhanced individuals?” Bucky says, speaking for the first time, and Steve, knowing his voice as well as his own, can hear the tiny traces of hurt and consternation. Fury, to his surprise, picks up on them as well, and says, “Not your kind of enhanced, Barnes. Telekinesis, magical abilities, superhuman strength, comes from another plane of reality, that kind of thing.” He waves his hand dismissively, as if he were talking about a particularly unpromising batch of internship applications.</p><p>Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see Bucky’s chest rising and falling as he breathes deeply, in and out, steadying himself. He grabs Bucky’s human hand and threads their fingers together, squeezing tight, stoicism be damned.</p><p>“What we need, however, are trainers. Teachers. Some hard-nosed old assholes to take these kids in hand and separate the wheat from the chaff. And lucky for me, I know some hard-nosed old assholes who might just fit the bill.”</p><p>“Are you…” Steve hesitates. Bucky’s hand is crushing his like a vise. “Are you asking us to work for SHIELD as trainers? In this new program? For enhanced kids?”</p><p>“Yes,” Fury says, for once direct and to the point. “That is exactly what I am asking.”</p><p>He leans back in his chair again and goes back to staring at them impassively.</p><p>Steve turns his head to look Bucky full in the face for the first time since they’d walked into Fury’s office. Bucky flicks his eyebrows up once, Steve turns down the corners of his mouth, Bucky wrinkles his nose, and Steve nods, almost imperceptibly. A whole conversation, the kind that can only happen between two people who have known each other for almost a hundred years.</p><p>“We need to talk about it. We’ll get back to you.”</p><p>Fury looks faintly amused, but claps his palms together once and says, “Then get the hell out of my office and don’t come back ‘til I call you.”</p>
<hr/><p>Crouton seems desperately glad to see them when they get back, standing on his hind legs in the window of Samara’s house next door and pawing at the glass when he hears their voices in the street. Steve can hear him meowing faintly, and Bucky’s voice goes high and squeaky when he says, “Oh, my poor baby, look how much he missed us!”</p><p>They walk up the stairs, Steve having to lean on the iron railing a little more than he’d like, and ring the doorbell. When Samara opens the door, Crouton dashes out and begins to wind around their legs, meowing piteously. Bucky bends down and picks him up, then rocks him onto his back like a baby and starts to croon nonsense into his face.</p><p>“Jesus christ,” Samara says. “You’d think that we’d been torturing him all week.” At that moment, Steve hears a shriek like a car peeling out of a parking lot and a soft <em>thump thump thump</em> as Freja crawls rapidly down the hallway. Crouton immediately flips over in Bucky’s arms and tries to climb up the side of his face.</p><p>“Hmm,” Samara says, frowning. “On second thought, maybe we <em>have</em> been torturing him all week.”</p><p>Freja crawls out the door, over to Steve, and grabs the leg of his sweatpants, pulling herself up to her feet while he holds onto the waistband with both hands and desperately tries to keep them from falling down around his ankles. She points at Crouton with one tiny finger and shouts, “GAAA BUHBEE. GAAA BUHBEE?” The last remark is obviously a question, directed at Steve, as she looks up at his distant face, her neck bent backwards at a right angle and her eyebrows furrowed. But before Steve can answer, she sways precariously, and he’s torn between catching hold of her so that she doesn’t fall down, and keeping hold of his sweatpants so that <em>they </em>don’t fall down.</p><p>Luckily, Samara scoops her up, although she keeps her death grip on his pants, and he has to lean on the railing with one leg stuck in the air like he’s frozen mid-roundhouse kick while Samara disengages Freja’s fingers by brute force.</p><p>“Yes, that’s Bucky’s cat,” Samara says, and Steve briefly wonders if she has one of those universal translator earpieces that they sometimes get on missions. “C’mon, now, leave Steve alone. He’s got a big boo boo.”</p><p>“Boo boo,” Freja repeats reverently, looking at Steve with something akin to newfound respect.</p><p>“How are you doing?” Samara asks, looking him over with a critical eye.</p><p>“Mostly better. I’ve got a couple more weeks of sick leave, but, uh…” he hesitates a moment. No one’s told him that this is classified, or any more classified than normal, and Samara’s a good friend, so he throws caution to the wind and goes on, “I put in my letter of resignation this morning.”</p><p>Samara’s eyes widen in surprise, then narrow, as she looks at him carefully, and then she grins. “Good for you. It’s about time.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, feeling a matching grin take over his own face. “Yeah, it is.”</p><p>“Well, we’d better go,” Bucky says. “Steve hasn’t been home in a week and a half.” They talk for a minute about making plans for after the weekend while Crouton hugs Bucky’s neck like a garish mohair scarf and Freja makes faces at Steve and drools.</p><p>When they turn to go back down the stairs, Freja bellows something unintelligible and smacks herself in the mouth with her open palm several times. Samara smiles. “She wants to kiss your boo boo, Steve.”</p><p>“Oh my god,” he hears Bucky whisper behind him.</p><p>“It was mostly broken bones and a punctured lung and other, uh, internal… boo boos,” he says awkwardly.</p><p>“Oh, no worries,” Samara says. “It’s all magic anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you kiss the actual boo boo or not.”</p><p>Steve leans down tentatively, but Freja shows no hesitation, grabbing him by the nose with one little clamshell fist and planting a wet, smacking, water-balloon kiss right under his eye.</p><p>He straightens back up, grinning in spite of himself, and pulls one sleeve of his hoodie over his hand to wipe off the spit. “Thanks, Freja,” he says, ruffling her downy hair. “I can feel the magic working. That sure helped a lot.” Behind him, he can hear Bucky give a soft, happy little sigh, and as he turns to walk back down the stairs, he does nothing to bite back the smile that bursts out over his face like a solar flare.</p>
<hr/><p>They take the next few days easy, easier than Steve has ever taken anything in his entire life. Bucky waits on Steve hand and foot, or tries to, and when Steve starts to whine about how he’s fine, or how he can do that himself, or how Bucky’s smothering him, for fuck’s sake, Bucky ignores him, threatens him, bribes him with sex, or outright emotionally blackmails him.</p><p>“Do you remember,” he begins, his face the very picture of an abandoned puppy caught a rainstorm, “that conversation we had back in June when I said that I needed something to take care of?”</p><p>“Yeah, and that’s why we got Crouton,” Steve says peevishly. They had been getting ready to go out to the grocery store, and he was slipping his boots on when Bucky knelt down and began to do up the bootlaces. That had been, for Steve, the last straw.</p><p>“Yes, and I take care of him,” Bucky says, waving at the cat, who is stretched all the way across the hall, idly flicking his tail, ignoring the bickering that’s going on in front of his whiskers. “But it’s not the same, Stevie. I need to take care of you, too. Because I love you,” he finishes, plaintively.</p><p>Steve looks at him for a moment, annoyed because he knows he’s being played, but rapidly softening at the oft-repeated declaration of love. Then he looks down at his boots, the laces still tangled around Bucky’s metal fingers. “Yeah, I know.”</p><p>Bucky, sensing a victory, finishes tying knots in Steve’s laces before standing back up and running his hands up Steve’s arms to his shoulders. Steve automatically puts his arms around Bucky’s waist and steps closer to bring their chests together.</p><p>“I just need to baby you a little bit, baby,” Bucky says, his mouth quirked up in a wry grin. “Like you baby me. I guess I’m just really…” He trails off.</p><p>“Maternal. Paternal. Whatever,” Steve finishes with a soft smile. “More than me, at any rate.”</p><p>Bucky looks up at him, his wry grin turned impish. “Oh, come on Stevie,” he says. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re plenty paternal when you put on that Captain America voice and say, ‘Now kids, you may think that doing drugs is cool, but I’m here to tell you...’” He’s pitching his voice deep, doing a parody of those terrible Cap PSA videos that SHIELD had tricked him into filming, and waving his forefinger in Steve’s face.</p><p>Steve catches hold of the offending finger and bites it softly when Bucky lets out an <em>eep</em> of surprise. “I’m not Captain American anymore, you know.”</p><p>“No,” Bucky says a little breathlessly, as Steve presses a kiss to the faint toothmarks on the pad of his finger, and then to the knuckles of his closed fist. “No, I guess you’re not.”</p><p>They finally get out the door and to the grocery store, where they buy butter, milk, a chunk of parmesan, a bottle of white wine, and some brandy, swinging by the bakery for a baguette on their way back.</p><p>When they get home, Bucky asks, glancing at Steve out of the corner of his eye and then looking away, “Want to help me make dinner?”</p><p>Steve hangs their empty shopping bags back on the hook inside the pantry and grins. “Trying to make up for earlier by putting me to work?” he asks, walking over to where Bucky is rummaging around under the counter for their soup pot. When Bucky stands up, Steve runs his hands up his sides and kisses the back of his neck, rubbing his short beard back and forth across his skin until Bucky squirms away.</p><p>“Hey, keep it in your pants,” he chides, “otherwise we’ll be eating takeout for dinner again.”</p><p>“I’m okay with that,” Steve rumbles, hooking his fingers through Bucky’s belt loops and pulling his hips back, flush with Steve’s.</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’m not, I really want French onion soup.” Bucky spins around and crowds Steve backwards until he hits the opposite wall. “Now be a good boy, Stevie, and get two quarts of stock out of the freezer.”</p><p>Steve licks his bottom lip, half because he likes the way it puts a minute hitch in Bucky’s breathing, and half because this kind of banter is usually a prelude to the kind of dirty talk that goes straight to his dick. But he takes a deep, hissing breath through his nose and says, “Okay,” and slips around Bucky, squeezing his ass as he goes.</p><p>He gets the two quarts of stock like requested and hands them off to Bucky, who puts them in a pan of water over a low flame. “Now what do you need me to do?”</p><p>Bucky looks smug. “Now, Steven, love of my life, I need you to get a pound and a half of yellow onions out of the pantry and slice them all up. Thin. Really thin. Like this thin.” He holds his thumb and forefinger out, an eighth of an inch apart.</p><p>Steve scoffs. “Ha! I knew there was some fishy business going on here. I thought you were trying to make me feel better, but what you really want is to watch me cry.”</p><p>Bucky looks, impossibly, even more smug and hands him the long chef’s knife and a cutting board.</p><p>Steve really does cry, because these onions, from Bucky’s garden, are exceedingly potent. But then Bucky kisses him and tosses the onions in the soup pot with a huge chunk of butter and some salt and sugar and the kitchen starts to smell so good that he decides it was worth it.</p><p>They listen to music over the fancy speakers, Bucky stirring the onions while they brown, shaking his ass, and singing all the words to songs that Steve has never even heard before while Steve washes up the breakfast and lunch dishes.</p><p>It suddenly hits him, listening to Bucky sing in his rough, sweet voice, that he has listened to far more music than Steve has, must have had the radio on all the time when Steve was at work in order to have memorized the lyrics to such a wide variety of songs. It makes his heart drop, a little, to think about Bucky here, by himself, filling up the silence of the house with Spotify.</p><p>“Hey,” he asks, before he can think better of it. “Were you lonely, here, all that time by yourself when I was at work?”</p><p>Bucky gives him a side-long glance before he props the wooden spoon on the side of the pot and goes into the pantry. “Yes and no,” he says, his voice muffled behind the pantry door. “I mean, I missed you when you weren’t here, but I’m comfortable being by myself. I like to be alone. I need it. That’s something that’s changed from… from before, right?” He emerges from the pantry with the flour canister and opens the silverware drawer, rooting around for a tablespoon.</p><p>Steve’s heart clenches in his chest, and at first glance, it seems like nostalgia, and boy, does that feel like a betrayal. But as he takes a second to turn the feeling this way and that, examining it from other angles, he thinks it’s loss, plain and simple. He doesn’t miss the old Bucky so much as he feels like a long-lost lover, someone that Steve had wrapped himself up in for a time, but who is no longer around.</p><p>“A penny for your thoughts?” Bucky asks quietly, and Steve realizes that he’s been standing in front of the sink and drying the griddle for the last three minutes, Bucky’s question hanging unanswered in the air between them.</p><p>“Uh, nothing,” he says. “Just thinking.”</p><p>Bucky shoots him a look, exasperated, but there’s a little bit of hurt that sneaks in at Steve’s evasion of the question, and then he looks back down at the onions he’s stirring. He moves out of the way when Steve leans over him to hang the griddle on the pot rack, but Steve reaches around to cup his cheek and kiss him on the temple.</p><p>“Sorry,” he says. “I mean, yeah, it’s different. You’re different. I was just thinking about how I miss the old you. Well, not miss,” he hurries to clarify when Bucky glances at him. “But, it’s like, if you had a lover, someone you really loved, but who wasn’t around anymore because both of you have moved on. You don’t want them back, not exactly. But you still feel the loss of them.”</p><p>Bucky switches the spoon from his human hand to his metal hand and says, “Yeah, I get that. I miss him, too, you know, even if I don’t really remember him. But I don’t exactly want to get back the part of him that I lost. It’d be like wearing a stranger’s shoes.”</p><p>“Exactly,” Steve says, letting the water out of the sink and drying his hands off on the dishtowel. “Me neither. It’s like what I feel for Peggy, I guess. I loved her. I still love her, in some way. But that part of my life has come and gone. I’m still grieving it, a little tiny bit, but I’d never go back to it. It’s the same with you. I’m still mourning the loss of, I don’t know, us as kids, the 30s, living together in that tiny little apartment, the Commandos, my ma, the way you were before, everything. And I’ll probably carry a little shrine to all of that stuff in my heart forever. But I’d never go back. I love you, the person you are now, all of you. You’re the one I want.”</p><p>Bucky’s holding the pot still with his human hand and stirring with his metal hand, but he’s got his eyes closed, breathing deeply through his nose. Steve feels another shot of that wild, unexpected tenderness that had so surprised him at the very beginning, and he leans over to kiss him on the temple again.</p><p>“You know,” Bucky says quietly, opening his eyes, “I feel the same way about you, though you haven’t changed as much as I have. I guess you’re still mostly the same, or at least the same old piss and vinegar.” He’s grinning now, and he glances at Steve with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Though I would love to have that little twink back for just one day so that I could throw him around a bit and then let him fuck me through the mattress.”</p><p>Steve throws his head back and laughs, clutching his chest and gasping for air. Bucky dumps a few spoonfuls of flour into the pot with the onions, now a glossy dark brown and smelling like caramel, and stirs vigorously with the wooden spoon.</p><p>“I love you so much, you jerk,” Steve says.</p><p>“I love you, too, punk. Now get one of the quarts of stock out of the water bath and pour it in here while I stir.” Bucky says, back to his old, imperious self. “Just a little bit at a time so the flour doesn’t get lumpy.”</p><p>Steve, still giggling a little, holds one jar with a potholder wrapped around it and pours the stock into the pot in a thin, steady stream, while Bucky stirs and the vapor above the stove condenses into a delicious, savory cloud.</p><p>After both quarts are blended in, Bucky sets the lid on the pot half-cocked, double-checks the fire underneath, and wipes his hands on the dishtowel. “Well, I can forget about that for forty minutes,” he says.</p><p>There’s a scratching at the back door and Steve opens it for Crouton, who saunters in waving his tail like the flag on a dune buggy. Steve twirls one hand in the air and bows at the waist. “My liege,” he intones, but Crouton ignores him in favor winding around Bucky’s ankles and meowing dolefully.</p><p>“Traitor,” Steve mutters, but Bucky says, “Oh, poor thing, you must be starving. It’s been a whole ninety minutes since you last ate.” He reaches up on top of the refrigerator, the only surface in the whole kitchen that Crouton hasn’t conquered yet, and pulls a cat treat out of a little plastic bag.</p><p>“Sit,” he says, holding the treat out at arm’s length. Crouton resolutely does not sit, but pirouettes around and around, his meows getting increasingly strident and pitiful.</p><p>“He’s never gonna learn how to sit,” Steve laughs from where he’s leaning over by the door.</p><p>“Okay, fine.” Bucky tosses the treat underhanded through the doorway into the hall and Crouton goes bounding after it.</p><p>“Should have asked for a dog, Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky turns around, narrows his eyes, and points a finger in Steve’s direction. But the playlist shuffles up a new track, and he immediately says, “Hey, INXS, I love this song,” and starts dancing around, wiggling his hips and looking at Steve salaciously.</p><p>Steve cocks an eyebrow, as clear a challenge as if he’s said it out loud, and Bucky stalks over to him, moving his pelvis like it’s made of liquid wax, singing, “I need you tonight 'cause I'm not sleeping.” He plasters his body up against Steve’s and gyrates his hips, and Steve’s already more than half-hard in his jeans. “There's something about you, girl,” Bucky growls, “that makes me sweat,” and he sings the word <em>sweat</em> with such a deep, breathy moan that Steve loses his mind, grabs him around the shoulders with one arm and the waist with the other, and, in one smooth movement, lays him down on the floor. “I’m gonna fuck you right here in the kitchen,” he says. He tries to make it sound like a threat, but it comes out breathless, instead.</p><p>“Mmm, Stevie,” Bucky hums, pushing his plump lips together in a pout. “Gonna use our organic, single-estate cold-pressed extra virgin as lube or what?”</p><p>“I might,” Steve says, “or coconut oil. Maybe I’ll just slather your belly with Nutella and lick you up. Or,” he says, his grin turning dark and wicked, “Maybe I’ll slather you with Nutella and then fuck you until you come all over yourself and then lick it all up together.”</p><p>Bucky bursts out into a gurgling half-laugh, half-noise of disgust. “Oh, shit, Steve, that’s nasty.” He’s shaking with laughter under Steve’s body, and Steve bites his lip with a considering look in his eye and says, “You know, sweet and savory together, like salted caramel.”</p><p>Bucky’s howling, now, and Steve’s giggling, too, but having Bucky laid out on the floor, vibrating beneath him, pulls him back into the moment, and he drops his hips between Bucky’s spread legs and grinds down. Bucky chokes on a laugh that turns into a moan and says, “I wasn’t kidding about the olive oil. I’ve heard worse.”</p><p>“You…” Steve starts, but then shakes his head. “Shut up. I don’t want to know.”</p><p>“I thought you said you loved all of me, Steven,” Bucky says, mock-offended, but his face is flushed and he keeps chewing on the plush rosebud of his bottom lip.</p><p>“I do,” Steve says, rucking Bucky’s shirt up and pressing hot, sloppy kisses up the long, flat line of his belly. “I even love the thoughts that you keep to yourself.”</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later, Steve has his weekly appointment with Dr. Castaño. He tells her about his injury, which she’d already known, and about how he quit the Avengering business, which she didn’t. She congratulates him, warm and effusive, and then says, “You know, I have a proposal that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to bring it up. I think we should drop the frequency of your sessions by half.”</p><p>“But,” Steve begins, and then can’t think of any way to end that sentence. “But,” he repeats, just to have something to say. Maybe he’ll think of a good objection. Maybe the little quiver of reflexive fear in his stomach will coalesce into something bigger, something that will give him a good reason to… to what? Beg to keep coming once a week?</p><p>Dr. Castaño, when he meets her eye, is looking at him as if she knows exactly what is going through his mind, and she probably does. “Do you remember when you told me, way back in April, that you were doing so much better?” she asks. Steve nods.</p><p>“And do you think that you’ve gotten worse since then? Has your anxiety worsened?” He shakes his head immediately; he doesn’t even need to think about it. “And have you had any panic attacks at all in the last few months?”</p><p>He shakes his head again. “No, not once, not since that weird half-panic attack I had the day that Bucky kissed me. Back in July.” It’s so strange to think that it was only four months ago; it seems so fresh in his memory, like the taste of the grapefruit he’d eaten at breakfast this morning, and yet so far away that it would take more than one lifetime to explain the duration of their relationship.</p><p>“You <em>are</em> doing so much better. That doesn’t mean you won’t need to see me more often in the future, or that you won’t have other problems. You might have trouble adjusting to civilian life, for example”—he shoots her a skeptical look, and she laughs—“or not. But my point is that I think we can easily cut down to once every two weeks to get you used to a new schedule, and then once a month after the New Year.”</p><p>“The New Year,” Steve murmurs. He rubs the scuffed toes of his worn boots together on the old, creaky floor. “Wow, time has really flown.”</p><p>“It’s been a little more than a year since you came to see me for the first time, remember?”</p><p>Steve huffs a rueful laugh and slouches further down in the chair, straightening his legs out so that his feet slide under Dr. Castaño’s desk. His hip still complains sometimes when he sits at a right angle for too long. “Of course I do. I was a nervous wreck.”</p><p>“And look at you now.”</p><p>Dr. Castaño’s office is warm and bright and the <em>clink-clank</em> of the old radiators sounds like the low murmur of familiar voices from another room. “Yeah,” he says, marveling, ”look at me now.”</p><p>Dr. Castaño has her hands folded in her lap; the black notebook is sitting closed on the writing pad on the desktop. “I’m so proud of you, Steve,” she says. “You’ve worked so hard and you’ve come so far and you’ve overcome obstacles that could easily have made you bitter, or a shell of yourself. But you’ve managed it with kindness and generosity and selflessness and grace.”</p><p>Steve swallows hard. He knows this, she’s told him before, Bucky’s told him before, and he knows that he’s done an objectively good job at therapy—two thumbs up, passing grade, gold star. But hearing Dr. Castaño say she’s proud of him makes him feel so young again, like he’s just taken his first step, read his first words, drawn his first recognizable human face. He closes his eyes and feels the phantom kiss of his mother’s lips on his forehead. <em>I’m so proud of you, my darling,</em> she whispers in his ear.</p><p>“You’ve been through some very difficult things,” Dr. Castaño continues, “and you’ve come out the other side of them the same person you were before.” She pushes the box of kleenex across the desk and then adds, “Or better.”</p><p>He pulls a kleenex out of the box and wipes his eyes. “Or better,” he murmurs, and it feels like the soft press of his own two hands laying a blessing on the crown of his very own head.</p>
<hr/><p>[Tony]: Gather round my children for I have TERRIBLE NEWS<br/>
[Tony]: We can’t host Thanksgiving at the Tower this year because apparently Pep has family?? And we’re going to their house for Thanksgiving???<br/>
[Pepper]: Tony<br/>
[Tony]: Who knew????<br/>
[Natasha]: We live at the Tower, too, u know. Pretty sure we can fend for ourselves<br/>
[Clint]: I’ll bag the turkey, are there turkeys in central park<br/>
[Sam]: Eww, no, nobody’s eating anything you find in Central Park<br/>
[Bucky]: Why don’t me and Steve host Thanksgiving this year<br/>
[Bruce]: Hey, that sounds like a good idea to me, Barnes is a better cook than any of the rest of us<br/>
[Steve]: Okay wait a minute, if we’re gonna host Thanksgiving, it’s gotta be a POTLUCK<br/>
[Steve]: We can’t cook everything, you all have to bring stuff, too<br/>
[Bucky]: Okay who’s coming, say aye<br/>
[Clint]: Aye<br/>
[Natasha]: Aye<br/>
[Maria]: not me, I’m [classified]<br/>
[Sam]: And not me either, I know Barnes is like Michelin-level good but he’s got nothing on my ma<br/>
[Sam]: Not to mention she’d kill me if I skipped out<br/>
[Bruce]: I’ll be there<br/>
[Natasha]: What should I bring?<br/>
[Bucky]: No idea, last Thanksgiving I was in SHIELD jail and I don’t remember anything before that. So I guess maybe it’s my first Thanksgiving ever<br/>
[Tony]: That’s the SADDEST thing I’ve EVER HEARD<br/>
[Tony]: It gave me a whole emotion and I DO NOT LIKE IT.<br/>
[Bruce]: Shit, okay, so it’s got to be really good. How about I make up a menu today and then we can decide what we’re each going to make and what needs to be ordered in<br/>
[Pepper]: I’ll send you the number of the caterer we usually use, I know they’d be happy to prepare anything you need. I’m sorry we can’t be there!<br/>
[Steve]: That sounds good, guys<br/>
[Bucky]: Thanks guys<br/>
[Bucky]: So I guess there’ll be five of us, which means one turkey each for me and Steve and the rest of you can split two<br/>
[Bucky]: Somebody check my math<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p>Steve had been a little nervous about the stress involved in hosting Thanksgiving at their house, even if only three people were coming and none of them were very picky or traditional. In fact, when Bruce had suggested that Natasha bring green bean casserole, she threatened to kill him and announced that she was bringing some kind of a cake called <em>medovik</em>, “and fuck the traditions of colonizers.”</p><p>Finally, though, after much cajoling and half a dozen technical drawings of their oven with four average-sized turkeys in various impossible configurations, Steve had managed to talk Bucky down to only two birds and to let Pepper’s caterers prepare them. “Our oven’s pretty big, Buck, but it won’t fit two turkeys in it.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, maybe we need two ovens,” Bucky had snarked, poking peevishly at the sheet of paper labeled ‘THANKSGIVING MISSION PREP’ with his pen.</p><p>Steve had crumpled up the last drawing, sensing victory. “Sure, sweetheart, you want another oven, I’ll give you another oven. But we can’t really start remodeling the kitchen five days before we’re scheduled to host Thanksgiving.”</p><p>Bucky had grumped about it for a while, but had finally agreed. “Okay, entrust the most important part of Thanksgiving dinner to total strangers, go ahead. That’s fine.” He scribbled something on the paper beside the word ‘TURKEYS’ and then looked up at Steve with a piercing glare. “But later, you and me, we’re gonna talk about this two ovens thing.”</p><p>The day of, Natasha arrives in the early afternoon with the cake and a bottle of wine and half a dozen baguettes and a bag full of blocks of paper-wrapped cheese.</p><p>Bucky is cubing a loaf of bread for the stuffing and Steve is peeling the roasted chestnuts. Natasha pours them each a generous glass of wine and then crouches down in front of the cabinets, opening them one by one and rummaging around.</p><p>“Need something?” Steve asks, nudging her knee with his toe.</p><p>“I brought stuff for a cheese plate, so I need something to put it on. A tray, a cutting board, a platter, something <em>this big</em>.” She holds her hands out two feet apart. “There’s a lot of cheese.”</p><p>Steve looks at Bucky, who shrugs. “I don’t think we have anything that big,” he says. “Except for the butcher block, but we’re using that.”</p><p>Natasha stands back up, doing a slow pirouette and examining the kitchen with narrowed eyes. Then Steve watches, chestnut in hand, as she brightens perceptibly and fixes him with a look that gives him a sinking feeling, an <em>uh oh</em> like a lead weight plopping into the bottom of his stomach.</p><p>“Steve?” she says.</p><p>“No.” He turns his back on her and works his paring knife under the thick chestnut skin.</p><p>“Aww, you don’t even know what I was going to say,” she purrs, suddenly at his elbow. Bucky’s snickering on the other side of the stove and not making any attempt to hide it.</p><p>“Don’t care, Nat,” Steve says loftily. “I know I don’t want anything to do with that tone of voice.”</p><p>Natasha tuts softly and says, “Well, if you won’t help me, I guess I’ll give Bucky first pick of the cheese plate. Let’s see, there’s emmentaler, burrata, manchego, gruyere, tetilla with quince paste, brunost, a runny brie that I bought on the black market…”</p><p>Steve cuts her off with a growl. “You made your point. What do you want.”</p><p>She gives him a sweet smile. “Where’s your shield?”</p><p>Steve whirls around to face her, pointing with his knife until she gives him a hard look and he hides it behind his back. “No. Absolutely not. It is not a serving tray. That’s… that’s… sacrilegious!” he says with a flourish of his chin.</p><p>Bucky’s giggling now, behind his back. “Steve, you’re retired. It’s just a hunk of metal.”</p><p>Steve ignores him, grinding his teeth, and tries one last time. “Do you know how much blood and sweat and alien goo that thing has seen?”</p><p>Natasha gives him a victorious grin. “I’ll wash it thoroughly, don’t worry. Now, tell me where it is and I’ll go get it.”</p><p>“No,” Steve says, tossing the chestnut back into the bowl. “I’ll get it myself. God knows the last thing I want is you rooting around in my closet.”</p><p>Now, sitting around the dining table, to which they’ve had to add another leaf to have enough space for all the food, his heart feels full and his stomach empty at the sight of the feast laid out before them. There are the two glossy, caramel-colored turkeys from the caterer, sausage and chestnut stuffing, two pumpkin pies made with a pumpkin from Bucky’s garden, and Steve’s specialty caramelized shallots, also from the garden. Bruce had brought the green bean casserole himself, made from scratch with mushrooms and fresh fried onions, and mashed sweet potatoes with rum and cinnamon and toasted marshmallows. Clint had outdone himself, surprising them all with roasted fingerling potatoes as well as the traditional mash, and ten bottles of Rioja.</p><p>“Shouldn’t we have a toast or a benediction or something?” Bruce asks.</p><p>“Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub,” Clint says, simultaneously reaching across the table for the stuffing.</p><p>Natasha slaps him on the hand and says, “Fuck tradition, obviously, but also I think it’s traditional to go around the table and say what we’re thankful for, and that’s nice.” She looks at each of them in turn.</p><p>There’s a pause, until Bruce says, “Fine, I’ll go first. I’m thankful for everyone at this table and everyone who’s here in the spirit but not in the flesh. And I’m thankful that I’ve only hulked out half a dozen times this year.”</p><p>“So far,” Clint mutters.</p><p>“So far,” Bruce repeats. “Okay, Clint, your turn.”</p><p>“I’m also thankful for everybody at this table and everyone who’s not, yadda yadda,” Clint says, waving his hand dismissively. “But most especially I’m thankful for Lucky, who’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. And for Nat, who never stops saving my ass.” Steve glances over and manages to catch the tiny wink that Natasha throws to Clint before he continues, “And all this food. And I love you guys, but let’s hurry it up.”</p><p>Natasha rolls her eyes and says, “I, too, am thankful for all you assholes. I’m thankful for second chances”—Steve catches her glancing at Clint again—“and that you let me bring medovik to Thanksgiving.” She looks at Steve, giving him the smile that pushes dimples into both her cheeks. “And I’m thankful that those two idiots finally got together.”</p><p>“Yeah, me too,” Steve laughs. “Uh, and I’m also thankful for all you, the best family that I never expected to find in the twenty-first century.”</p><p>“Fuck, I’m gonna cry,” he hears Clint mutter.</p><p>“More than anything, of course, I’m thankful for Bucky. Impossible to say how thankful.” He reaches over and takes Bucky’s metal hand where it’s lying in his lap. “He’s the be-all and end-all of my whole fucking life.”</p><p>Bucky’s eyes get a sudden gleam in the lamplight. “Shit, Steve, not in front of the kids,” he says. His voice is clear and steady, but Steve knows better, and gives him a soft, private smile.</p><p>“Uh,” Bucky says, “My turn. Okay, I’m thankful for all of you, of course. For dealing with me when I wasn’t at my best.” Natasha tsks and Bucky shoots her a glare. “No editorializing. This is <em>my</em> speech.” He clears his throat and continues, “Bruce, for always being the calmest person around. You’re like the anchor that holds the boat steady in a storm.”</p><p>Bruce whips his glasses off, rubbing furiously at the lenses with his shirttail. “Uh, wow. Thanks,” he mutters gracelessly.</p><p>“And Clint, you’re so much fun. I’m thankful you’re such a great friend and you take me shopping and to try all those drinks at Starbucks. And thank you for introducing me to Lucky, otherwise we never would have got Crouton.”</p><p>Clint is beaming. “You’re welcome, dude. Now do Nat.”</p><p>Bucky’s grin ratchets down a few notches, turns into something smaller, but more meaningful. “Natasha. There are many reasons why I’m thankful for you. I think you know them all. But above all, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you, so thank you for taking a chance and not shooting me on the spot when you saw me in Tony’s lobby.”</p><p>Natasha looks composed, like always, but there’s quirk to her lips that belies how touched she is. “The pleasure was all mine,” she says.</p><p>Bucky takes a deep breath. “And Steve. You also know how thankful I am for you. For being the catalyst for every good thing that has ever happened to me. For loving me when I didn’t even know who I was. For being so fucking good,”—he’s crying now, and Steve is sniffling, wiping his nose on his napkin—“for being the best man I know. And for being a self-righteous little shit, because if you’d never gotten into that fight when you were six years old, I never would have had to step in and save your ass, and I would have had to live the whole rest of my life missing the other half of my heart.”</p><p>He’s squeezing Steve’s hand painfully tight in his lap, but Steve shakes him off and grabs his face in his hands, pressing hot, melting kisses to his wet cheeks and his soft mouth.</p><p>“Okay, fuck you guys, that’s disgusting,” he hears Natasha say, her voice suspiciously rough. “The food’s half cold already. Let’s eat.”</p>
<hr/><p>On the Monday after Thanksgiving, Steve gets an unexpected call from Fury as he’s eating breakfast. “Hello?” he says around a mouthful of leftover pie.</p><p>“Rogers. Be in my office at eleven a.m. Bring Barnes.” Again, Steve sits there with the phone held up to his ear, waiting for the click and the dial tone before he remembers that neither one of those things exists anymore. He heaves a sigh.</p><p>“Fury?” Bucky asks. His own plate is scoured clean; whereas Steve is savoring the last taste of Thanksgiving, Bucky had inhaled his own piece of pie in less than the time it took Steve to unstick his sleepy eyes and grope around on the table for his fork.</p><p>“Hopefully for the last time,” Steve says, and Bucky nods, nervous and hopeful, before he glances down at Steve’s plate.</p><p>“Don’t even think about it,” Steve says, and scoots his plate down the table, shielding it with his arm and baring his teeth as Bucky laughs.</p><p>At eleven o’clock on the nose, they walk through the door of Fury’s office. Steve frowns a little when he sees Natasha perched on the windowsill, but after a moment’s consideration, he realizes that he’s more relieved than surprised.</p><p>“Boys,” she says, giving them a small grin.</p><p>“Nat,” he says, giving her a nod before pulling out one of the chairs in front of Fury’s desk and sitting down.</p><p>Bucky gives her a smile and small wave and then scoots the other chair close to Steve’s so that they can sit with their knees touching.</p><p>Meanwhile, Fury stares at them impassively, fingers steepled in front of his face. When they finally get settled, he clears his throat and says, “I think you know why you’re here.”</p><p>“I hope it’s ‘cause you’ve got some paperwork for us,” Steve says.</p><p>“Do I ever,” Fury says, and then, unexpectedly, shoots him a grin. It changes the whole tenor of his face; he turns immediately from judge, jury, and executioner to sardonic co-conspirator, and Steve finds himself grinning back without even thinking about it. Fury pushes a thick folder across the desk toward Steve, who picks it up and slips off the rubber band that’s holding it together. Bucky scoots his chair a little closer so that he can lean over into Steve’s space and look at the file as Steve opens the manila cover.</p><p>Inside is a stack of mismatched documents, complete with dog-ears, foxed corners, and rusty staples bleeding orange stains onto yellowed copy paper. On the very top is a small blue piece of paper so flimsy it’s almost transparent, covered in lines of typewritten Cyrillic. “What’s this?” Steve says, picking it up gingerly.</p><p>Before Fury can answer, Bucky says, “It’s a birth certificate, for Yakov Yuryevich Kuznetsov. Born March 10, 1984.” He looks at Natasha, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Did you do this?” Her eyes are twinkling as she nods, and she looks exceedingly proud of herself. Then he turns to Fury and says, “1984? That makes me thirty-one. You couldn’t have pushed it back two years and made me twenty-nine?”</p><p>Fury snorts. “This is taking too long,” he says, the irritation in his voice belied by his tamped-down grin. “Let me give you the rundown, and then you go over it with a magnifying glass at home. I’ve got more important things to do with my morning than deliver 31-year-old babies.”</p><p>Steve reaches out with his unoccupied hand and squeezes Bucky’s knee. Bucky takes his hand and laces their fingers together.</p><p>“Alright,” Fury says, putting his elbows on his desk and leaning forward. “Baby Yakov was born on March 10, 1984 in a run-down suburb outside of Moscow to a young, unwed mother who immediately deposited him on the doorstep of an orphanage. Four months later, Robert and Diane Barnes of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn traveled to Russia and adopted baby Yakov, changing his name in the adoption process to James Buchanan, after his adoptive father’s favorite historical figure.”</p><p>“Named after myself,” Bucky interrupts, with a laugh that’s half-pained and half-mirthful. “That’s a new one.”</p><p>Fury just shrugs. “Baby James had an unremarkable childhood, grew up, graduated high school with a 3.9 GPA and enrolled at NYU as a computer science major. Unfortunately, halfway through his sophomore year, his loving parents died in a car accident, leaving him an orphan for the second time in his life.”</p><p>“Jesus christ,” Steve breathes out, but Bucky just squeezes his hand. When Steve glances over, he seems entirely unaffected by the deaths of—Steve has to remind himself—two people who never existed.</p><p>“Young James Buchanan must have been a star student or something, it doesn’t matter, it’s all in the transcripts you’ve got in that file.” Fury waves his hand vaguely at the stack of papers in Steve’s lap. “Anyway, he comes to the attention of none other than Tony Stark, who decides to give him an internship at Stark Enterprises, which turns into a job offer, which turns into a position on the team headed directly by Stark himself, where, one supposes that sometime in 2012, he catches the eye of Stark’s other coworker, Captain Fucking America.”</p><p>Steve can feel his eyebrows creeping up to meet his hairline. He glances over at Bucky again, who meets his eye this time with a look that says <em>what the fuck</em>, when Natasha interrupts and says, “Let me be the first to congratulate you, boys. I’m a little upset that you didn’t tell us, but, you know, you would have had to know about it yourselves, first.”</p><p>Steve turns his head to look at her, and plastered across her face is the biggest shit-eating grin he’s ever seen on her. It’s equal parts hilarious and disconcerting, and he feels a little thrill of excitement and dread. “Okay, Fury,” he says, “cut to the chase. What do we have to be congratulated about?”</p><p>“Well,” Fury says, wearing a grin equal to or greater than Natasha’s, “after what one supposes was a hasty whirlwind romance, on December 31st, 2012, in a very small, <em>very</em> private ceremony in Stark Tower, you and Barnes here were joined in holy matrimony by Barton who is, for some reason, licensed to perform marriages in New York State. Congratulations, three years late.”</p><p>He rises in his chair and reaches out across the desk to shake first Steve’s hand, and then Bucky’s. Then they both sit back in their chairs, too dazed for the moment to say anything, until Bucky starts to giggle. He looks over at Steve and Steve starts to laugh, too, harder and harder until they’re both crying, gasping for breath, Bucky doubled over in his chair and Steve with his head thrown back, his right hand clutching his chest. “We’re… we’re… fucking married!” he finally gasps out, and Bucky says, wiping his eyes, “for almost three years!” which sends them back into another round of great peals of cathedral-bell laughter.</p><p>Finally, Fury clears his throat and says drily, “If you’re done?”</p><p>Steve nods, pulling up the hem of his shirt to rub at his smarting eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sorry, go ahead.” One last little giggle escapes him, but he gets it under control.</p><p>Natasha gets up from her perch on the windowsill and walks around the back of Fury’s desk to stand next to his chair. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to run all of this by you first, but you kind of jumped the gun with your resignation, and we needed you to be married for legal reasons. And you did give me carte blanche, Steve.”</p><p>He feels cleaned out, sunny and relaxed in a way he’d never imagined he could feel within ten blocks of SHIELD headquarters. “It’s… it’s fine, Nat. We were, uh…” he looks at Bucky, who nods. “We were talking about it, anyway. Honestly, this saves us a lot of paperwork, so thanks for that.”</p><p>“Moving along,” Fury says, clearing his throat in his peevish way, “everything is in the file. Birth certificates, adoption papers, citizenship papers, school transcripts, employment contracts for Stark Enterprises, marriage certificate, even a copy of your lease in DC with his name on it.”</p><p>All of a sudden it hits Steve, the amount of work that has gone into this new identity. “Holy shit,” he says, under his breath. “Thank you so much Nick, for everything. We were expecting a new passport or something, not a whole new life.”</p><p>“Thank Romanova here, she did most of the work,” Fury says.</p><p>When Steve looks up at Natasha, feeling a little breathless as the weight of the gift that’s been given to them settles around his shoulders, she gives him a slow, fond smile and says, “It was nice to build someone else’s cover for a change. Consider it your wedding present.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says, still reeling a little. “Yeah, thanks.”</p><p>Fury clears his throat again. “Now, if we’re done with the lovey-dovey shit, get out of my office. I’ve got a disreputable government agency to run.”</p><p>They stand up, and Bucky shakes hands with Fury a second time while Steve gives Natasha a hug that blows past a mere embrace and veers right into clinging. “I can never thank you enough, Nat,” he says in her ear, and she whispers back, “It makes me very happy to see you very happy.” Then she pushes him away and says, a little louder, “Nick and I are the only two that know. I won’t tell anyone else, that’s up to you two. But your anniversary is coming up in a month, and I think it would be nice to mark the occasion with your friends, somehow.”</p><p>“Sure, Nat,” he says, and squeezes her shoulder. “We’ll think of something.”</p><p>“Move your asses, out, out,” Fury says, settling back in his high-backed chair and shooing them toward the door with an imperious wave. Bucky replies with a sloppy salute and says, “Sir, yes sir,” and they laugh all the way to the elevator.</p>
<hr/><p>As they’re crossing the bridge back to Brooklyn on the bike, Steve feels Bucky, plastered against his back, start to shake, his chest heaving, his body moving out of sync with the throbbing of the motor. He almost pulls over in the narrow margin before he makes out, just barely, the sound of his joyful laughter over the roar of the engine.</p><p>When they pull through the gate into their tiny front yard, Bucky hops down and pulls off his helmet, shaking his hair out and giving Steve a wide, happy grin.</p><p>“What was so funny back there?” Steve asks, his face a mirror of Bucky’s own. “I thought you were gonna be sick all over the inside of your helmet or something, you were shaking so hard.”</p><p>The brilliance of Bucky’s grin ratchets up a few notches and he says, “I was thinking, can you believe we’ve been married for almost three years but we didn’t consummate it until four months ago?”</p><p>“Hold on a sec,” Steve says, in a moment of brilliance, and quickly locks up the bike before dashing up their worn sandstone stairs and unlocking the front door. He leaves it standing wide open and runs back down to the front yard again.</p><p>Bucky looks confused, amused, and a little annoyed, “Stevie, what the fuck are you doing, you’re letting the hot air…” he says, before cutting off with a whoop when Steve sweeps him off his feet and carries him bridal-style up the stairs.</p><p>“Guess we’d better make up for lost time, sweetheart,” he says, and turns his head to press the softest of kisses to Bucky’s lips. Then he carries him carefully through the narrow door and over the threshold, humming the wedding march low in the back of his throat as they go.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. December</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One morning at the beginning of December, Steve comes back from his pre-dawn run to find Bucky sitting at the dining room table nursing a cup of coffee with a thunderous expression on his face. Steve toes his shoes off in the hallway and walks into the kitchen, turning his back on Bucky and whistling to himself as he fills up his own cup from the carafe. Then he opens the door of the pantry and rummages around inside for the jar of oats, until Bucky finally loses patience and says, “<em>Steve</em>.”</p><p>Steve can hear the italics. He suppresses a giggle and says sweetly, “Yes, sweetheart?”</p><p>“<em>STEVE.</em>” This time Steve can hear both italics and capital letters. He backs out of the pantry with the oats in his hand and an expression so innocent that not even Freja could have pulled it off, and says, “Yes, my darling?”</p><p>“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Bucky snarls, but with his rumpled hair and his pillow-creased face, he looks more like a puppy than a wolf.</p><p>“Who, me?” Steve asks, ducking his chin, his eyes round and his mouth pursed in a cherub’s pout.</p><p>Bucky presses his lips together in a thin line and narrows his eyes, but Steve can tell that he’s having to struggle to keep his face under control.</p><p>“You, Steven,” he says bitterly. “Why did you leave your phone in the bedroom with the alarm set for seven a.m.? And another for seven-ten? And another for seven-fifteen? And another for seven-seventeen? There may have been more, but I smashed the phone at seven-seventeen, so I don’t know.”</p><p>“You <em>what</em>?” Steve gasps, but Bucky just grins and pulls the intact phone out of his pocket.</p><p>“Gotcha.”</p><p>Steve breathes a sigh of relief and reaches up to get a pot down from the pot rack.</p><p>“Really, though, why did you set so many alarms? And so fucking early?” Bucky says, his voice curious now.</p><p>“Because I want to go to Montauk and we need to get an early start.”</p><p>“You want to go to Montauk,” Bucky repeats, frank unbelief flattening his voice out.</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“And you want to get an early start.”</p><p>“Uh huh. It takes two-and-a-half hours to get there.”</p><p>Bucky heaves a sigh and stands up, his chair scraping against the floor. He walks through the kitchen and gives Steve’s ass a stinging slap before he says, “Don’t make me any oatmeal, I’m going back to bed. You can take your sweet ass out to Montauk all by yourself.”</p><p>Steve whirls around and catches hold of his arm. “Wait, wait, wait, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry about the alarms. I should have warned you. I just wanted it to be a surprise. And,” he adds sheepishly, “I thought the alarms might be kind of funny.”</p><p>“Kind of funny,” Bucky repeats again, but he doesn’t pull his arm out of Steve’s grip, and there’s an involuntary smile twitching in the corner of his mouth.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says. “Please come to Montauk with me?”</p><p>Bucky heaves another sigh and turns to Crouton, who is sitting in the doorway watching them. “Can you believe what I have put up with?” he asks. When Crouton only blinks at him, he rolls his eyes to the heavens and turns back to Steve. “Okay, fine. I’ll come with you to Montauk. Now get started on that oatmeal while I take a shower.”</p><p>“Sir, yes sir,” Steve grins, and gives him a lazy salute.</p><p>It’s a beautiful winter day, the kind with a brilliant blue sapphire sky with only a few high-up cirrus clouds, like the afterthought of winter weather. It’s above freezing, not too cold for an excursion, but cold enough that they have to dress in multiple layers in order not to freeze on the motorcycle on the way out. “This is ridiculous, you know,” Bucky says. “We’re gonna be popsicles by the time we get there.”</p><p>Steve’s packing some thermoses of hot coffee into the panniers, but he stops and leans over to where Bucky is standing on the other side of the bike and gives him a slow, filthy kiss. “Don’t worry, I’ll warm you up,” he smirks.</p><p>“Oh, I get it,” Bucky laughs. “We’re ‘going to Montauk.’” He makes air quotes with his gloved fingers.</p><p>“You’ll see,” Steve says, his smirk growing wider. “I’m not promising anything, though.”</p><p>They do get cold on the drive out, but not as cold as Steve had been afraid of; underneath their pants, they’re both wearing the fleece-lined leggings that Steve had bought for running in the dead of winter, and are wrapped up in enough scarves and gloves and sweaters to make a cozy nest for a whole family of raccoons.</p><p>By the time they get to Montauk, the sun is high up in the sky, almost as high as it’s going to get. Steve parks by the lighthouse and shoulders the backpack with the thermoses, and they walk down to the beach.</p><p>They stand on the sand for a while, watching the waves skip in and out, looking out at the shipping that’s running, almost invisible on the horizon, down to New York.</p><p>“Nantucket’s out that way,” Steve says, pointing eastwards.</p><p>“Jesus christ, have a little imagination, Stevie,” Bucky gripes. “Portugal’s out that way. We could get there if we swim in a straight line, although we might hit the Azores first.”</p><p>Then he spins around and kicks a little sand at Steve with the side of his boot. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit, and I need a little exercise to warm up. Race you!” And off he takes running.</p><p>Steve, unable to turn down a challenge just like he’s unable to stop his own heart from beating, takes off after him, yelling, “Race me where?”</p><p>“I dunno!” he hears Bucky say, faintly, the wind whipping his words away over the water.</p><p>He eventually catches up to him, or perhaps Bucky slows down and lets him catch up, he’s not sure. They roughhouse a little in the sand, shedding gloves and scarves and hats left and right, both of them steaming gently from the exertion. Then Steve pulls out one of the thermoses and unscrews the top, passing it over to Bucky. They take turns drinking the hot coffee, heads tucked together, looking out at the sparkling sea and the wheeling, squalling seabirds.</p><p>Steve’s heart feels so full, all of a sudden, like it has forgotten to beat and is just filling up with all the blood in his body. It feels too big for his chest, pressing up into his throat and even behind his eyes, threatening tears. He almost abandons his grand plan for the day to skip right to the good part, but Bucky says, “I’m fucking starving, didn’t you bring any food?”</p><p>“I didn’t think you’d want to eat out on the beach when it’s thirty-nine degrees, so I made reservations at the café that’s down from the lighthouse. Not that I needed to. We might be the only ones there.”</p><p>Bucky looks pleasantly surprised and somewhat relieved, and Steve wonders if he’d really thought that they were going to have a picnic on the beach on a windy day at the beginning of December. “Oh, ye of little faith,” he grumbles, but Bucky just pulls him back into another hot, coffee-tasting kiss.</p><p>They gather up their winter wear and walk back down to the restaurant, passing the thermos of coffee back and forth as they go. It’s a good little restaurant, and there are a few other tables occupied, but not many, so the waitress sits them next to the broad windows that overlook the beach. They have chowder and grilled fish and extra fries on a plate set between them. Bucky goes to douse the whole plate with ketchup, but catches himself just in time, righting the bottle and glancing up at Steve. “Almost forgot you like the ketchup on the side,” he says with a grin, and Steve, caught up in a whirlwind of affection and anticipation, barely stops himself from vaulting over the table to kiss the life out of him.</p><p>The food is good and warms them up from the inside out. They have more coffee and pie for dessert, apple and pecan, and then walk back down to the beach full and drowsy and content. The sun is starting to go down behind them. It’s not quite the golden hour yet, but Steve thinks it’s good enough; he can’t wait any longer.</p><p>“Let’s walk down a little farther,” he says, wanting to get out of range of anybody that might see them, although anybody with sense is tucked up in a warm building somewhere. His voice trembles, just the minutest tremor, but Bucky shoots him a sharp glance from in between the brim of his knit beanie and the scarf that he has wrapped around his nose and mouth.</p><p>“You okay, Stevie?” he asks, muffled through the layers of wool.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says. He coughs into his fist, buying himself some time. “I’m fine. Hey, you remember when you were in SHIELD, and I told you that one time about coming out here on my birthday?”</p><p>“I do,” Bucky says, his voice soft. He pulls the scarf down under his chin so that he can talk more clearly. “It almost broke my heart, thinking of you spending the night out here by yourself on your birthday so that you wouldn’t have to hear the fireworks.”</p><p>“Yeah, and you remember how I said the next year would be better?”</p><p>They’re already holding hands, and Bucky uses that to pull Steve in close and tuck himself under his arm. “Yeah, I remember. And was it?”</p><p>“Of course it was, you dolt,” Steve laughs. “You took me on a real vacation! Should have known then that you were in love with me, but it took me another week to figure it out.”</p><p>“Should have known ninety years ago, ‘cause that’s about how long it’s been,” Bucky says, gazing out across the water.</p><p>Steve takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out. “On that note,” he says, and lets go of Bucky’s hand, pulling his glove off with his teeth so that he can fumble around in his pocket. Bucky stops walking and watches him, eyebrow cocked, as Steve finds what he’s looking for and pulls it out, hiding it in his big palm. Then he steps around in front of Bucky and gets down on one knee in the sand and opens the little blue velvet box. “James Buchanan Barnes, will you marry me?”</p><p>“Steve,” Bucky whispers. “Steve.” A hundred emotions are visible on his face, eddying around under the surface like the sea in the wake of a boat. He reaches out with his human hand and touches the set of rings in the box, two thin, simple gold bands, just brushing them gently with his fingertips, as if he’s afraid that they’re going to disappear if he handles them too roughly.</p><p>Steve can see that his eyes are full of tears, and his nose is starting to run a little. He stands back up, not bothering to brush the sand off his knee, and uses the end of his scarf to wipe Bucky’s nose softly. “So,” he whispers, barely audible over the <em>whsss</em> of the waves running up onto the beach, “whaddya say?”</p><p>Bucky sniffs and blinks the tears back in his eyes, and then throws himself forward with a force that makes Steve stagger back a step, the heel of his boot sinking into the soft, damp sand at the high-tide line. “Yes, yes, of course, yes, yes,” he repeats, like a litany, like an incantation, a spell to bind their two souls together.</p><p>Steve holds him tightly, works his nose into the warm, sweet-smelling space between the brim of Bucky’s winter hat and the back of his ear, and screws his eyes shut on the hot, briny tears that spring up.</p><p>They stand like that for a minute, pressed hard into each other as if, by force of will, they could mingle their bodies together like two lumps of clay. Then Bucky sniffs wetly and says, into Steve’s wooly scarf, “I don’t know why this is hitting me so hard. I mean, we’ve been married for three years already.”</p><p>“Sure,” Steve says, his breath ghosting over the soft curve and bump of Bucky’s ear, “but only on paper. Not in spirit. Or in the flesh.” He giggles in spite of himself.</p><p>“Don’t ruin the moment, Steven,” Bucky grumbles.</p><p>Steve lets go of the vice grip he has on Bucky’s shoulders and pushes him gently back. His nose and his eyes are red and watery, but his mouth is quirked up on the side. Steve pulls the box back out his pocket where he’d shoved it when Bucky had almost knocked him down, and opens it, gingerly pulling out one of the rings. “Can I put it on you?” he asks, almost shyly. “Which hand do you want?”</p><p>“Good question,” Bucky says, frowning slightly. “The right hand, for now.” He holds it out, and Steve takes his beloved fingers gently between his own and slides the ring onto his fourth finger and over his knuckle. Then he brings Bucky’s hand up to his lips and gives the knuckle a kiss.</p><p>Bucky looks like he’s about to cry again. “Okay, my turn.” He catches Steve’s left hand in his own, and takes the other ring and holds it up, turning it this way and that, peering at the inner surface. “Is it engraved?” he asks, his brow furrowed.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says. He clears his throat, which for some reason feels both too full and too small, his heart pressing up into it again like a soft fist. “It says, ‘til the end of the line.’ Yours says the same thing.”</p><p>Bucky really does start crying in earnest, now, wiping his streaming eyes and nose with his coat sleeve before choking out, “You fucking sap.” Then he slides Steve’s ring over the fourth finger of his left hand and grabs him around the back of his neck, pulling him into a kiss that tastes like salty sea air and pecan pie and feels like the drop of molten wax that seals their lives together.</p>
<hr/><p>The next week, Steve texts Natasha on Tuesday morning.</p><p>[Steve]: Hey, wanna come over for dinner?<br/>
[Natasha]: Is Barnes cooking?<br/>
[Steve]: Yeah, duh<br/>
[Natasha]: Ok, fine. I’ll be there at six.<br/>
[Steve]: Bring Clint, okay? We need a favor from him. And you’ll know all about it ten seconds later so you might as well get in on the ground floor<br/>
[Natasha]: How well you know me &gt;:)<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p>There’s a rap on the door at six sharp, and when he opens it, Natasha’s eyes zing like a laser beam to the thin band of gold around his ring finger.</p><p>“Steve,” she says, smiling with her whole face. “Don’t tell Barton, let’s see how long it takes him to figure it out.”</p><p>“Figure out what?” Clint asks, shuffling through the door behind her.</p><p>Natasha smirks at Steve dangerously, so he just slaps Clint on the back and says, “You heard her, gotta figure it out yourself. Why don’t you go see what Bucky’s up to? He’s in the garden making the pizza.”</p><p>“In the garden making pizza,” Clint repeats, bemused, as he hands Steve two six-packs of beer. They all move into the kitchen so that he can put the beer in the fridge.</p><p>“Yeah, we, uh, have a wood-fired pizza oven now.”</p><p>Natasha looks amused, “You bought him a pizza oven?”</p><p>Steve hides his head behind the open refrigerator door. “No, I, um, I may have <em>made</em> him a pizza oven.”</p><p>Natasha laughs, a short, sharp bark. “Jesus christ, Rogers, you’ve been retired for all of a month and look what happens. You get so bored you start a construction business.”</p><p>“It was only the one,” Steve says sullenly.</p><p>The door to the backyard creaks open, letting a blast of cold, woodsmoke-scented air into the kitchen. Bucky sticks his head around the jamb and says, “Oh, hey guys! Somebody want to come out here with me? I need some help with the fire.”</p><p>“Ooh, fire,” Clint says with alarming enthusiasm, and follows him out onto the deck.</p><p>When the door bangs shut again, Natasha grabs Steve’s big spatula of a hand between her two deceptively dainty ones and examines the ring up close. “So, what’s the story behind this?”</p><p>He slips the ring off and presses it into her palm. She tries it on each of her fingers, but even on her thumb, it looks like a hula hoop. “Well, I broached the subject way back in September, kind of on accident.”</p><p>“Of course you did,” Natasha mutters, and he wrinkles his nose and sticks his tongue out petulantly before he continues, “And he said that it’d be nice to have a proper proposal, so I wanted to do it the right way. So I got the rings and took him to Montauk and proposed on the beach.”</p><p>“Very classic, except for the part where it’s December.” She hands the ring back and he slips it over his fourth finger in a well-practiced gesture. It’s been five days, but he can’t stop touching it, twisting it round and round, pulling it off to rub the warm, smooth gold between his thumb and forefinger. It’s not just that he’s unused to wearing a ring, it’s that he can’t stop thinking about it, about what it means, about how something so insignificant-looking can be the practical definition of forever—<em>‘til the end of the line</em> in physical form.</p><p>“Yeah, it was a little cold.” He shrugs. “But I don’t think he cared.”</p><p>She smiles softly, glancing out the kitchen window. The sun is long gone from the sky, but they can see the silhouettes of Bucky and Clint outlined by the bright flames at the back of the pizza oven. “No, I don’t imagine he did. So if you did a proper proposal, does that mean you’re going to have a proper wedding?”</p><p>“Well,” Steve says, running his hands through his hair. It’s shaggy, almost as long as Bucky’s now, and his fringe flops back down over his forehead. “That’s what you guys are here about.”</p><p>“Oh, really?”</p><p>“Yeah, since Clint was the one who ‘officiated’ when we got ‘married’ the ‘first time,’”—Natasha scowls and slaps his hands down so that he can’t make any more air quotes—“and he <em>is</em> an ordained minister, somehow, we thought that he should be the one to marry us again.” He keeps his hands down at his sides, but the air quotes on <em>marry</em> come through loud and clear.</p><p>Natasha glares at him, and spins around to face the window. But he can see the reflection of her face in the glass, illuminated by the lights under the cabinets, and she’s smiling. “And me? Why am I here?”</p><p>Steve shrugs. “You’re my best friend.”</p><p>He watches her reflection, and he knows that she knows he’s watching her. She bites her lip momentarily, then spins back around and links her arm through his. She squeezes his bicep between her arm and her ribs so hard that his hand goes momentarily numb, and it’s just as good as a bear hug.</p><p>He squeezes her back, softer, and says, “And also because I know you stick your nose absolutely everywhere, and you’d find out anyway, so, like I said, you might as well be involved from the start.”</p><p>She squeezes his bicep again, but he flexes this time so that she can’t pinch his nerve. They battle silently for a second or two before she sneakily jabs him in the side with the fingers of her other hand, and he squawks and lets her arm go.</p><p>“Well,” he says huffily, “I was gonna ask you to be my best man, but maybe I should call Bruce instead.”</p><p>Natasha smirks at him and walks over to the fridge, pulling out two bottles of beer and deftly popping both caps on the corner of the countertop. She hands one to Steve and takes a pull of her own, then says, “You wouldn’t dare.”</p><p>“No,” Steve says, “I wouldn’t.”</p>
<hr/><p>There are four pizzas, golden and crispy and dusted with flour on the bottom and with burnt spots in all the right places. They taste like wood smoke and scamorza and burrata and tomatoes and basil and mushrooms and spicy chorizo and pineapple and merguez—not all on the same pizza—and the one especially for Natasha is crisscrossed with soft, melting anchovies.</p><p>They eat the first one standing huddled around the warmth of the pizza oven. Clint stuffs half a slice in his mouth and gets burnt, and then immediately stuffs the other half in and gets burnt again. Natasha laughs at his pained grimace until tears run down her face, and when Steve glances over at Bucky, he looks giddy with happiness.</p><p>Bucky uses his metal hand to mound the coals in the back of the oven and everyone teases him for showing off until he huffs grumpily and says, “C’mon, let’s go inside. It’s getting cold out here.” They take the next pizza inside and eat it at the dining room table and Bucky goes back and forth two more times until all of the pizza is gone and the table is a mess of greasy napkins and crumby plates and empty beer bottles.</p><p>“Well,” Steve finally says, “we didn’t invite you guys over here just because we like you.”</p><p>“Aww,” Clint pouts, and Natasha rolls her eyes.</p><p>“So,” he starts again, waving the objection away, “Nat already knows this because she was there.”</p><p>“And because she’s Nat,” Bucky interjects.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve continues, “and because she’s Nat and she knows everything worth knowing.” Natasha preens ostentatiously. “So, Clint, we want to get married and we want you to marry us.”</p><p>Clint’s mouth drops open; he looks like he’s taken a two-by-four to the back of the head. “Me?” he squeaks. “Why me?”</p><p>“Funny you should ask,” Bucky says, looking at Steve. “First, because you’re already ordained by the god of the internet or something,”—he waves his hands in a way that says <em>the future is inscrutable</em>—“and second, because you actually married us once already. It’ll be three years ago on the 31st.”</p><p>Clint’s mouth is still hanging open, and now he’s looking back and forth between the other three with a goofy expression on his face.</p><p>“Just put him out of his misery, Steve,” Natasha says.</p><p>“Okay, fine. Nat here, with a little help from Fury, finally got Bucky’s papers in order, so he’s no longer dead or ninety-three or even James Buchanan Barnes, born in Brooklyn. Now he’s James Buchanan Barnes, born Yasha Something-or-other outside of Moscow in 1984, and he’s a mere babe in the woods at a tender thirty-one.” He reaches over and pinches Bucky’s cheek and coos at him; Bucky pulls away with a grimace, but he looks secretly smug. “And, in order to make everything more secure, we needed to be married, so we have a wedding certificate signed by yourself on December 31st, 2012."</p><p>Clint shuts his mouth and narrows his eyes, staring off into the distance, his brow furrowed in thought. “Sounds about right,” he says eventually, “I don’t remember anything from New Year’s Eve 2012, I could have married half of Manhattan for all I know.”</p><p>“You got into Thor’s mead and were blackout drunk for two days,” Natasha sighs, fondly put-upon. “You spent most of that time on the medical floor while they were trying to figure out how to flush your system.”</p><p>“Hmm.” Clint rubs his chin, deep in thought.</p><p>“Anyway,” Steve says quickly, before the conversation can be derailed, “we’re married, but we didn’t actually get to celebrate it because… because…” Bucky kicks him softly under the table, and when Steve looks over, he just shakes his head. <em>Don’t go there</em>, his face says, and Steve nods. “Anyway, we’d like to have a small ceremony on New Year’s Eve, just the Avengers and friends. And we want you to marry us again if you think you can stay sober. Soberish,” he corrects, after a minute. “At any rate, we'll do it early enough that you can still be blackout drunk by midnight if you want.”</p><p>“Oh, not me,” Clint says seriously, shaking his head. “I don’t do that kinda stuff anymore. I’ve matured.”</p><p>When the laughter finally subsides—Steve squeezing his chest with his big right hand like it’s going to fall open unless he holds it together, Bucky bent over clutching his stomach with his head between his knees, and Natasha sprawled backwards in her chair, wheezing painfully— when the laughter finally subsides, Clint takes another pull from his beer bottle and looks around the table with a smile. “What a display of confidence. Of course I’ll marry you guys, and as a wedding present, I’ll graciously pass up the glorious opportunity to embarrass you both in front of all your friends and relations.”</p><p>“Good thing we have no relations,” Bucky says, finally sitting up and finger-combing his wild hair away from his still-red face.</p><p>“No, in this case, your friends <em>are</em> your relations. It’s very incestuous,” Clint says, throwing Natasha an exaggerated wink that sets them all off into peals of hyena laughter once again.       </p>
<hr/><p>When Natasha and Clint finally leave, Bucky goes outside to make sure the fire is out while Steve scrapes the garbage into the bin and puts the dirty plates in the dishwasher. He’s stuffing the napkins into the laundry bag in the pantry when Bucky comes back inside and slides up behind him, wrapping his arms around Steve’s middle and pressing his face into the back of his neck. Although the rest of his face is warm, the tip of his nose is a little frozen spot against the first knob of Steve’s spine, and he can feel the coldness of the metal arm around his waist, even through the thick knit of his sweater and Bucky’s plaid flannel shirt.</p><p>He sways back and forth on his feet a little while Bucky hums a tuneless little tune, chafing the metal arm with his hands even though he knows that Bucky isn’t bothered by its chill. It just seems like the right thing to do, to warm up your sweetheart on a cold winter’s night. They stand like that for a while, barely moving in the doorway of the pantry while Bucky squeezes Steve tight and Steve looks at the jars of oatmeal and flour and raisins and almonds on the pantry shelves without really looking at them at all.</p><p>Finally, he turns around in the circle of Bucky’s arms and pulls him in even tighter to his chest. His sweater gets a little twisted up because Bucky still has his arms encircled around Steve’s waist, but it’s not uncomfortable. Now, Bucky buries his cold nose in the crook of Steve’s neck and it feels good; he’s a little overheated, and it feels like holding an ice cream cone on a hot day.</p><p>“So now we have to plan a wedding,” Steve rumbles, barely opening his mouth.</p><p>“Mmm hmm,” Bucky hums into his neck.</p><p>“I was thinking... nothing fancy?” he says. That’s a little lie, actually. He hasn’t thought about this at all, hasn’t thought even one second beyond asking Clint to do the honors. But he knows without thinking about it that he wants to get married simply, quietly, just a few friends and two good suits and <em>in sickness and in health</em> and ‘<em>til death do us part</em> and <em>you may now kiss the groom</em> and maybe nothing else.</p><p>“Gotta have flowers,” Bucky mumbles sleepily, and Steve thinks, <em>Oh, of course</em>.</p><p>“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says, and runs his hand up the back of Bucky’s neck and into his hair, making him sigh and slump in his arms like a flag when the breeze dies. “Of course we have to have flowers. I can’t imagine you getting married without flowers around you.”</p><p>“Like that picture, from the sketchbook,” Bucky murmurs, and it takes Steve a moment to remember what he’s talking about. But when he does, he can feel his heart give an extra-strong <em>ka-thump </em>while his eyes prickle ominously.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, “like that.” Like the picture Steve had drawn of him—for him—when he was still in SHIELD custody, the picture of Bucky as a baby-faced teenager, wearing a mantle of flowers around his shoulders—white lilacs, pink foxgloves, and purple irises.</p><p>He squeezes a little tighter and Bucky says, “Oof” and laughs softly into the collar of his sweater. Then he tilts his head and says, a little more clearly, though his voice is thick and drowsy, “Okay, something simple, but with flowers. I like that idea.”</p><p>“And just the Avengers and company.”</p><p>“And Samara has to be my maid of honor.”</p><p>“Okay, and Samara.”</p><p>“And Freja, she’ll be the ring bearer.”</p><p>“Okay, <em>fine</em>, and Freja.”</p><p>“And if we invite them, we can’t leave poor Jens and Daniel at home alone all by themselves.”</p><p>“Okay, jesus, poor Jens and Daniel can come too.” Bucky nods his head on Steve’s shoulder, then reaches up with his human hand to pull the collar of Steve’s sweater down so that he can press a kiss to the soft skin he uncovers. “Wait,” Steve says, shivering a little, “have you been thinking about this already?”</p><p>“Mmmmaybe,” Bucky hums, his raspy jaw vibrating against Steve’s collarbone. It tickles and he squirms his shoulders a little, almost digging his fingers into Bucky’s sides in retaliation before Bucky hums again and says, “I’m so sleepy.”</p><p>“Yeah, me too, sweetheart. Ready to go to bed?”</p><p>“Carry me?” he asks, and lets all his weight fall against Steve because he knows that Steve will catch him, every time.</p><p>“Of course,” Steve says. Since that first time, Bucky has asked, again and again, to be carried up to bed. It’s not that he needs it; nothing like that post-birthday party episode has happened again. But it’s another way to ask for tenderness, and another way for Steve to give it to him. It’s like the warm hand that caresses his neck when Bucky passes by the couch, it’s like his fingers in Steve’s hair until Steve falls asleep with his head in Bucky’s lap, it’s the ripest fig quartered on his plate at breakfast, it’s the jasmine hung in the window of his studio, it’s the lavender under his pillow and the hands that give him pleasure and the mouth that seems not to know how to leave his mouth alone.</p><p>He squats a little and wraps his forearms under Bucky’s butt. “All you gotta do is ask,” he murmurs as he straightens back up again with his lightest burden and walks out through the kitchen, Bucky reaching over to flick the light off as they go.</p>
<hr/><p>December soldiers on, cold and dark, but there are a few days of snow flurries that never actually pile up enough to turn into slush, so everything evens out.</p><p>They ask Cerise at the garden center and, eventually, based on her recommendations, find a florist who’ll give them “a little bit of everything, we don’t really care.” They go to Steve’s (Tony’s) tailor and get Bucky measured for a suit. Steve buys a new tie. Clint asks about logistics, Steve says, “Uh, I’ll talk to Bucky and get back to you,” and then forgets.</p><p>And all of a sudden, it’s December 18th, and Steve is in the kitchen making roasted tomato soup for lunch when the front door bangs open and Bucky shouts, “STEVE!” from the entryway. Steve dashes through the kitchen door with a ladle leaving a trail of splotches on the floor, narrowly avoids tripping over Crouton, who complains loudly at being disturbed, and says, “What? <em>What?</em>”</p><p>“It’s December 18th,” Bucky says, unwinding his scarf from around his neck.</p><p>“Uh huh?” Steve realizes that the ladle is still dripping and puts his other hand underneath it to catch the drops, too little, too late.</p><p>“We don’t have a Christmas tree!” Bucky wails, sounding panicked, and Steve, all of a sudden, realizes that he has completely forgotten about Christmas. How, in the cacophony of red and green and lights and carols that assaults him any time he leaves the house, could he have forgotten about Christmas, he has no idea. But the fact of the matter is that he has no tree, no presents, and almost no time left.</p><p>“Oh, shit,” he says. “Oh fuck. You’re right. I guess what with all the, uh, planning our wedding stuff, it slipped my mind.”</p><p>Bucky pulls his feet out of his unlaced boots and lines them up carefully, side by side, in their cubby under the bench. Then he stands up and kisses Steve on the cheek, giving him the flattest of looks when he pulls away. “What planning,” he says, and it’s not even a question. “We had to do like two things.”</p><p>“Actually, three things, I was supposed to call Clint back to talk about logistics but I forgot.”</p><p>Bucky rolls his eyes and walks into the kitchen, peering with interest into the bubbling soup pot on the stove and then opening the fridge to pull out a bottle of beer. He pops the cap with his metal thumb and Steve watches with open fascination. He loves Bucky’s metal hand so much, especially now that he can admire it openly without looking like a weirdo. It’s just so cool. He tried to open a beer bottle with his own thumb once in imitation and the results had not been pretty.</p><p>“Steve, you’re doing the thing again,” Bucky says, and grins at him.</p><p>Steve colors a little in spite of himself, in spite of the fact that there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, and anyway, they’ve been together for months and months now, so a little light obsession with Bucky’s metal hand is just part of the glorious harmony of their relationship, right? Right.</p><p>He clears his throat and does an about-face. He stirs the soup with the ladle and wipes his other hand on the dishtowel. “We can go get a tree after lunch. This is about done, so I’m gonna make the grilled cheese and then we’ll eat. You want cheddar, muenster, or brie?”</p><p>“Make me one of each,” Bucky says, coming up behind him and kissing the back of his neck. “I’m hungry.”</p><p>After lunch they clean up and walk down to the nearest tree vendor on Flatbush Avenue. Bucky picks the first one that looks mostly symmetrical, and they hoist it up on their shoulders and carry it home.</p><p>It takes Steve ages to find the tree stand from last year hiding under a roll of canvas and a pile of stretcher bars and a box of seashells and a stack of art books that he’d forgotten to buy another bookshelf for in the back of the closet in the studio. Then it takes them another half an age to wrestle the tree into the stand and get it screwed in and find the nicest-looking side to face out toward the living room. But when they finally get it set up, they take a minute to stand back and look at it, nestled in the corner between the window and the armchair, dark green and smelling like resin and mountain air and the outdoors and camping and bonfires and winter and home.</p><p>“Perfect,” Bucky says, and wraps his arms around Steve’s waist. “You have decorations, right? From last year? I remember you making snowflakes when you visited me at SHIELD.”</p><p>Steve’s heart feels like a banked fire in his chest as he pulls Bucky into his side with both arms, kissing him on the temple and burying his nose in his hair. He’s warmed up in the time that it’s taken them to put the tree up, but his hair still smells like the wintry outdoors, crisp and cold and clean. “Yeah, they’re in another box somewhere. I should have put it with the tree stand, but I wasn’t that smart. It might be under the bed.”</p><p>The light is fading fast, and the sky that Steve can see through the window, between the branches of the oak, has just the barest hint of pink overlaying the midnight blue. Steve kisses Bucky again. “Why don’t we wait to decorate until tomorrow? It’ll be much easier if we have sunlight to work in. Plus, I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to find that box.”</p><p>Bucky grumbles under his breath, but finally tsks and says, “Okay, fine.”</p><p>Steve lets him go and walks around the room, turning on the lamp beside the couch and the hanging lamp in the dining room. “I wish we had a fireplace,” he says, coming back around to where Bucky is still standing in front of the tree. “Or a woodstove. It’s really the only thing this house is missing.”</p><p>“Mmm,” Bucky hums, leaning up against Steve’s chest, head on his shoulder, hands worming their way into the front pocket of his hoodie. “Yeah. That would be really nice. Sitting on the couch with a book, reading by the firelight…” he trails off, looking thoughtful. “A bearskin rug, you fucking me on it in front of a roaring fire, so romantic.”</p><p>Steve growls softly, less a growl and more a rumble deep in his chest, and walks Bucky backward until his calves hit the edge of the armchair and he drops down into it, Steve immediately sinking down to straddle his thighs. “I don’t see why we need a bearskin rug. Or a fireplace, for that matter,” he says, and digs his chilly fingers up under Bucky’s sweater and into the blaze of body heat that hides like a brazier underneath his clothes. Bucky twitches but doesn’t jerk away, letting Steve warm his hands and knead at the plush layer of skin and fat and downy hair that covers his belly.</p><p>“Not to change the subject,” Steve continues, “but there’s actually a fireplace in this house already, behind the chair, here. It was blocked up years and years ago, before I bought the house.”</p><p>Bucky sits up straight, almost dislodging Steve from his lap, and cranes his neck around to look at the wall behind the chair, where there’s nothing to see but a blank expanse of creamy off-white. “Wait a second,” he says, realization dawning over his face when he turns back around, “of course there is, I can’t believe I didn’t realize that, Samara has one and it’s right on the other side of this wall.” He slumps back in the chair again and settles his hands on Steve’s hips. “Some fucking spy I am,” he grumbles.</p><p>Steve is reminded, suddenly, of the first time they’d had sex, when Bucky had told him he’d tossed the whole house the day Steve had brought him home, and how Steve had thought, delighted, <em>Look at you now.</em> He’s flooded, all of a sudden, with the same feeling, a crowing kind of joy tempered with a little bit of smugness and pride. <em>Not a spy anymore</em>, he thinks, and lays his hands over Bucky’s at his hips, the warm one and the cool one, squeezing both his wrists.</p><p>“You can get fireplaces redone, or woodstoves installed, why don’t we look into it?” Bucky asks.</p><p>Steve shrugs. “It’d be nice to have, but we don’t really need it, it’d just be a luxury when we’ve already got the radiators.” He curls down and nuzzles his nose into the crook of Bucky’s neck, but jerks back up again when Bucky pinches him in the side.</p><p>“Steve, you’re allowed to have nice things,” he says, looking stern, but the effect is ruined by the way he’s worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.</p><p>“Well, if it’s something you want, we can definitely think about it,” Steve says, and then, when Bucky pinches him on the other side, he yelps, “Hey, you jerk, what’s that for?”</p><p>“Because you’re allowed to have nice things because you want them! Don’t try to use me as an excuse to do something nice for yourself. You’re not half the martyr you used to be, Steve, but you still haven’t learned that you deserve good things just as much as I do.” He’s smoothing his hands up and down Steve’s sides, now, even though the sting of his pinches is already gone.</p><p>Steve deflates, his irritation vanishing almost before he even has time to feel it. “Yeah, I know,” he says softly. “Maybe I’ll think about it. Maybe for next year.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Bucky hums doubtfully. “I know evasion when I hear it. But I’ll let it slide for right now, as long as you give me a kiss and then make me something for dinner.”</p>
<hr/><p>A few days later, Steve gets up earlier than usual to go on his run. When he gets back, he throws a Dutch baby together and sticks it in the oven before he goes upstairs to take a shower. He sneaks up the staircase, avoiding the two that squeak, and silently opens the bedroom door. He’s two steps inside when Bucky, invisible inside the mound of blankets that seem to be consuming him the way a starfish consumes a sea urchin, says faintly, “I’m awake, you don’t have to be so quiet.”</p><p>“If I was so quiet, how did you hear me in the first place?” Steve starts stripping his sweaty running clothes off in front of the closet door.</p><p>There’s a rustling and some soft swearing and then a head appears, looking, with its wild hair, very urchin-y indeed. Bucky glares at him, bleary-eyed and squinting against the soft light coming through the open hall door. It’s still dark outside; Steve realizes with a start that it’s the solstice, the shortest day before the longest night of the year. He thinks idly about dancing naked around a bonfire in the frosty night air and shivers.</p><p>Bucky struggles to pull a hand out of the embrace of the duvet and then runs it through his hair, flattening it on top but ignoring the sides so that it sticks out all around like a mushroom cap. “You can’t hide from me, Steve,” he says, voice a little rumbly with sleep. “I’m the world’s foremost ex-assassin. Or have you forgotten?” His enormous yawn is a sinkhole opening up in the middle of his face, and he smacks his lips once or twice like the cat does when he accidentally gets a hair in his mouth.</p><p>Steve is overwhelmed, suddenly, by the urge to take Bucky’s sleepy face between his hands and squish it painfully. Instead, he lets himself fall forward onto the bed in only his underwear and mashes his face into Bucky’s neck, breathing in the warm, comforting smell of hibernation.</p><p>“Eugh, get off, Steve, you’re twice as heavy as you were yesterday and you smell disgusting.”</p><p>Steve props himself up on his elbows on Bucky’s chest and says, with a friendly leer, “I thought you liked me disgusting.”</p><p>Bucky grimaces. “Don’t use that against me. I just woke up five minutes ago and I don’t feel like choking on your sweaty dick right now.”</p><p>Steve laughs and presses a rough kiss against his warm cheek and rolls off of him, padding through the bathroom door. “There’s a Dutch baby in the oven, the timer’s gonna go off in ten minutes, could you take it out?”</p><p>He turns on the showerhead and, over the rush of the falling water, he hears Bucky grouse nonsensically, “I’m gonna put a Dutch baby in <em>your</em> oven.” There’s a thump and more muffled cursing and then Bucky shuffles into the bathroom to splash water on his face.</p><p>“I’d let you put a baby in my oven anytime,” Steve says, tipping his head back to rinse the shampoo out of his hair.</p><p>Bucky sings a wobbly line of something that Steve thinks is maybe Portuguese, his voice rough and half a step off key. He turns around to walk back out of the bathroom, but stops and sticks his head around the shower curtain, giving Steve a slow up-and-down. “What if we just say, ‘fuck the Dutch baby’ and go back to bed and fuck, baby?”</p><p>Steve bursts out laughing. Bucky half-awake is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Often, he’s grumpy and rude and won’t do more than grunt until he gets a cup of coffee in him. But sometimes he acts a little punch-drunk, and Steve loves him that way. He tries to take advantage of the playfulness, usually, but today he has an appointment to keep.</p><p>“Can’t, I’m really sorry. But I have to see a man about a dog.”</p><p>Bucky just says “Hmm,” suspiciously and glares at him, or, rather, deepens his bleary-eyed half-awake squint. After a minute of absently watching Steve soap himself up, he finally says, “Well, I’ve got to see… another man… about another… dog. Too. So. I’ll take a rain check.”</p><p>“Okay, Buck, go make coffee,” Steve says as he turns around under the spray to rinse the soap off, and Bucky disappears with one last grunt.</p><p>After his initial panic about having bought zero presents at the late, late date of December 18th, Steve had gone into overdrive, spending the next two days tearing around the boroughs on his bike with Bucky and flinging money at startled shop assistants. They had gone to buy books for all of the Avengers, plus a fluffy coral pink cashmere-mohair sweater with bobbles for Natasha. He fully expects her to smack them for daring to try and soften her image, and then wear it everywhere for weeks on end.</p><p>This morning, after he gets out of the shower and goes downstairs to eat Dutch baby with a decidedly more alert Bucky, he pulls on his coat and the hat with the pom-pom and his boots and kisses Bucky in front of the kitchen sink, where he’s washing up the breakfast dishes. “I won’t be too long this morning, I don’t think. I’ll definitely be back by lunch. You said you also have somewhere to be?”</p><p>Bucky looks shifty, and Steve bites back his grin. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “I’ll be back by lunch too, I think. Want me to pick up something from the Church Avenue place on the way back?”</p><p>“Ooh, yeah.” The Church Avenue place is their favorite Thai take-out spot. “Get one order of drunken noodles and one green curry and one red curry and pineapple fried rice. And then something for yourself.”</p><p>Bucky rolls his eyes. “You’re a pig, Steve. A pig!” But Steve knows that Bucky’s going to order just as much for himself.</p><p>“Hey, pigs are cute,” Steve says, “like me,” and then runs cackling out the kitchen as Bucky catches him a stinging smack on the ass with his dishwater-damp metal hand.</p>
<hr/><p>Where Steve goes is back to the same shop that Natasha’s bobble sweater came from, a little place in Park Slope that sells rough-around-the-edges handknits for exorbitant prices. There, he buys Bucky a long, filmy scarf in Prussian blue and a bright green fisherman’s sweater, the color of watercress before you pull it from the streambed. It’s thick and soft and has a cowl neck and Steve can hardly wait to put it on him on Christmas morning. Then to another two stores, where Steve buys some cookbooks, a collection of <em>Mafalda</em> comics in the original, and a set of weatherproof Bluetooth speakers for the garden. And then he makes one last stop at Little My, where he buys a model 1938 Alfa Romeo Mille Miglia, a beautifully-illustrated children’s encyclopedia of flowers, and a big Lego set of a space station.</p><p>Is it too much? Possibly. They hadn’t discussed exactly what Christmas was going to entail, no cap on the number of gifts, no hard spending limits. But what Bucky deserves is everything that Steve can possibly give him, and he should be thanking his lucky stars that Steve didn’t start his Christmas shopping until it was almost too late, otherwise he would have ended up with one of every interesting thing for sale in every small store within walking distance of their house.</p><p>The day is dark and the clouds are low and the wind is menacing all the spaces between his hems and his cuffs that aren’t cinched tightly enough, but Steve shoulders his half a dozen bags and whistles happily all the way home.</p>
<hr/><p>On Christmas Eve, Steve is in the kitchen toasting his third bagel when Bucky walks in in his pajamas, looking remarkably chipper for someone who just rolled out of bed two minutes ago. Steve narrows his eyes and Bucky gives him an innocent-looking grin as he saunters over to the coffee maker.</p><p>“You’re up to something,” Steve says, no preamble, no <em>good morning</em>.</p><p>“It’s Christmas Eve, of course I’m up to something,” Bucky scoffs into his cup of coffee.</p><p>“Buck,” Steve starts, but Bucky grabs a bagel from the paper bakery bag and says, “Anyway, good talk, what time do we have to be at the Tower this afternoon?”</p><p>It’s a transparent ploy, but he’s so cute with his bedhead and his falling-down pajama pants and Steve is so in love with him that he just rolls his eyes and says, “Four o’clock. The plan is to watch a movie before dinner and then another after dinner so that we can be back here at a reasonable hour.”</p><p>“So, you think we might be back by, say, 10 p.m.?” Bucky asks, his eyes wide and his face pure and virtuous.</p><p>Steve shrugs internally; whatever Bucky’s up to, he’s sure it’s to his benefit, so he’s not going to try to pry the secret out of him. “Yeah, sure, we can be back by 10 p.m. if you need to be.”</p><p>All Bucky says is “Mm hmm” as he splits the bagel with his fingers and plops it in the toaster slots. When he turns around and leans back against the counter, Steve steps in between his splayed feet and kisses the self-satisfied smirk off of his face.</p><p>Bucky sighs happily when he breaks the kiss, and then, his eyes full of love and tenderness, says, “You taste disgustingly like garlic and onions.”</p><p>Steve snickers and squeezes his hip. “Everything bagels are the only kind allowed in this house, you know that.”</p><p>Bucky just gives him that look again, and when Steve starts to lean in to plant another kiss on him, he slowly brings his cup of coffee up between them and slurps down another mouthful.</p><p>Steve bursts out laughing and squeezes him harder, then takes his own bagel, now cold, into the dining room to eat.</p>
<hr/><p>After breakfast, they both brush their teeth and then go back to bed, where Steve presses Bucky down into the mattress and fucks him with a slowness born of a desire to see him boneless and soft and all used up, like a roll of film waiting snug in its dark canister to be developed.</p><p>Then they shower and lie around on the couch until after lunch, when it’s Steve’s turn to look shifty and say, “I need to wrap presents.”</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says, his nose stuck in his book, not really paying attention.</p><p>“Yeah, but I need to use the dining room table.”</p><p>Bucky lowers the book and peers over the top at Steve, who has got his head on a pillow in Bucky’s lap. “And?”</p><p>Steve feels a tiny flash of annoyance. “And maybe I have something to wrap for you, too, you blockhead. Can you move your ass upstairs for half an hour?”</p><p>Bucky drops the book open-faced onto Steve’s chest and grins down at him, the angle of his jaw pushing out that little pad of fat under his chin that has come back in the last year. It’s soft and sweet and makes him look young, and Steve loves it so much he has secretly thought about taking a picture of Bucky’s chin to keep in his wallet. “Aww, Stevie,” Bucky says, “did you get me a Christmas present?”</p><p>“Yes, it’s divorce papers, now please get a move on.”</p><p>Bucky gasps in surprise and delight. “What a coincidence! I got you divorce papers, too!”</p><p>But finally, he goes upstairs and shuts the door to the bedroom and Steve gets all of the presents wrapped in red and green paper with gold and silver bows. When he goes upstairs and opens the bedroom door, Bucky is lying on the bed tapping out a message on his phone, but he locks the screen and shoves it under his pillow as soon as Steve comes in.</p><p>Steve sits down next to him and runs his hand up and down Bucky’s thigh. “Do you need to do any wrapping? I left all the stuff out downstairs.”</p><p>“Nope,” Bucky says, looking smug. “I got all my stuff wrapped ages ago. It’s been sitting in the closet in the spare bedroom for days.”</p><p>“Well, you don’t have to get all high and mighty about it,” Steve says sourly, but Bucky just laughs at him and pulls him down for a kiss.</p><p>“Shouldn’t we be getting ready to go? It’s already half past two.”</p><p>Steve rubs his hand up Bucky’s thigh again and squeezes him right at the crease where his leg meets his hip. “Yeah, I guess so. If we had a little more time, we could go another round. You could give it to me, this time.”</p><p>“You’re insatiable, Rogers,” Bucky says fondly.</p><p>Steve squeezes the crease of his thigh again, gazing down at his big hand spanning the narrow expanse of Bucky’s hip—soft skin, taut tendon, deceptively delicate bone, and the warmth that Steve can feel radiating through his thick fleece sweatpants. He clenches his jaw unconsciously, feeling the phantom give of Bucky’s hot flesh between his careful teeth. It’s not that he’s insatiable, it’s just… “It’s you,” he says, and swallows. “How could I not be, when it’s you?”</p><p>Bucky gives him a look, soft but assessing, but he just says, “We’ve got the rest of our lives. Let’s just get to the Tower so that we can come back and go to bed. Because the sooner we go to bed, the sooner we can wake up on Christmas morning.” He does a happy little wiggle under Steve’s hand and Steve feels that near-overwhelming urge again to squish Bucky’s face until he squeaks. But he just grits his teeth a little and squeezes Bucky’s thigh one last time and says, “Alright, then, let’s go.”</p>
<hr/><p>They watch <em>The Muppet Christmas Carol</em> and eat a proper Christmas dinner with a roast goose from Pepper’s army of caterers and Tony says “God bless us, every one” in a high, piping voice over and over until everyone yells at him to shut up. Then they collapse on the couches again and hand presents around until the floor is a sea of crumpled wrapping paper and tangled ribbons.</p><p>Contrary to expectations, Natasha loves her sweater and immediately strips off her practical heather-grey sweatshirt to pull it on. She sweeps her static-y hair from under the collar with one hand and then gives each of them a kiss. “Steve, Bucky,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “I feel awfully seen right now.”</p><p>Bucky gives her an appreciative once-over and says, “You oughta, you’re walking proof that redheads can wear pink.” Natasha smirks and bounces off with an honest-to-god flounce in her step.</p><p>Later, they watch <em>Die Hard</em>, which Clint insists is a Christmas movie. The rest of them boo and hiss and Hill says, “Do ever get tired of being a walking stereotype of yourself?” Clint gets a look on his face like <em>he’s</em> the one who is feeling awfully seen and then, a second later, sticks his tongue out and crosses his eyes. “Nuts to you jerks,” he says with feeling, and the whole room dissolves into helpless laughter.</p><p>It’s not quite ten o’clock when they pull up in front of the house, tired but happy. Steve opens the front door and they pull off their boots and hang their coats up. “Ready for bed?” he asks as he walks into the living room to turn off the Christmas tree lights.</p><p>Bucky hums distractedly, and Steve turns around to find him tapping something out on his phone, Crouton flopped over his shoulder. “Whatcha doing?” he asks with a grin.</p><p>Bucky huffs an irritated breath through his nose. “Steve,” he says warningly.</p><p>Steve waltzes over to him, wiggling his hips suggestively. “Well I, for one, am going to put some presents under the tree, and then I’m going to bed. I don’t know what shenanigans you have planned, but…”</p><p>Bucky bites his lip, looking aroused and annoyed at the same time, but says, “Well, go get your damn presents and then go the fuck to bed, and I promise you’ll find out all about my shenanigans in the morning.”</p><p>At five past ten, Steve is already under the covers in his pajamas, lying curled up on his side and trying to get to the end of the chapter he’s on before his eyes close and refuse to open again. He can hear Bucky, in the room across the hall, moving things around in the closet and carrying on a whispered conversation with Crouton. “I swear to god, if I get up tomorrow morning and you’ve scratched all the presents, I’ll…”</p><p>All of a sudden, the doorbell rings. Steve sits bolt upright in bed and is throwing off the covers when Bucky comes rushing out of the spare room and says, “I’ve got it! You stay in bed.”</p><p>“Who the fuck is ringing the doorbell at this time of night?” Steve says, confused, as he stands up and shoves his feet into his slippers.</p><p>Bucky’s halfway down the stairs already, but he runs back up and stands in the doorway with his hands on either side of the jamb, blocking Steve’s view of the front door with his chest. “I said I got it.” He gives Steve a warning look, and then whirls around and closes the door behind him. “Don’t come down or I’ll skin you alive!” Steve hears him yell from the entryway.</p><p>Ten minutes later he comes back upstairs looking thoroughly satisfied with himself. “What was that?” Steve asks, not expecting an answer.</p><p>Bucky’s in the closet stripping his jeans off, but he sticks his head out and gives Steve that happy, sun-bright smile that makes him smile uncontrollably in turn.</p><p>“Shenanigans.”</p>
<hr/><p>Steve wakes up bright and early on Christmas morning, just like he does every morning, but this morning feels special. Bucky is invisible under the covers, nothing but a croissant-shaped lump that occasionally mumbles to itself.</p><p>He slides out of bed, careful not to pull on the duvet, and slips a sweater on before he pads downstairs, avoiding the two that creak.</p><p>He peeks into the still-dark living room and sees, to his surprise, an enormous cardboard box sitting in front of the tree, blocking the space between the coffee table and the bookshelf. It’s not wrapped, of course, but there’s a jaunty little bow sitting on the top like a lone parsley leaf on a beef wellington. “Shenanigans,” Steve whispers to himself and laughs.</p><p>In the kitchen, he makes himself a quick cup of coffee with the Moka pot and then gets the coffee maker set up for spiced coffee—cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, black pepper, cloves—so that when he hears Bucky moving around upstairs, all he has to do is turn the switch on.</p><p>Then he gets flour and sugar and yeast out of the pantry and pulls eggs and milk and butter out of the fridge. He wipes the counter down with the dishcloth, just in case Crouton had walked over it with his dirty little kitty-litter paws in the night, and then pulls the big glass bowl out from the cabinet under the counter.</p><p>Three hours later, the cinnamon buns are in the oven, the kitchen is clean, the sun is shining through the window over the sink and is filling the room with melted-butter light, and Bucky is still sound asleep in bed.</p><p>Steve creeps into the bedroom and sits carefully on the side of the bed. “Hey Buck,” he says softly, stroking his hand down the curve of the duvet croissant. “Wake up, it’s Christmas morning.”</p><p>Bucky stirs and groans and then sits bolts upright with a gasp, throwing the covers into Steve’s lap. “It’s Christmas!” he says, like a five-year-old. “Wait. How long have you been up?”</p><p>“Long enough to make cinnamon rolls, and they should be out of the oven in five minutes.”</p><p>“You didn’t touch the box, did you?”</p><p>“What box?” Steve asks, his face a mask of innocent curiosity. When Bucky frowns, he says, “Oh, you mean the gigantic box that’s blocking half the living room? That box?”</p><p>“Yes, that box, Steven.”</p><p>“Well, I picked it up and shook it,” Steve starts to say, but then Bucky starts whaling on him with one of the pillows and Steve pins him down and kisses him sloppily until his mouth is red and his chin is covered with spit. “Gross, Steve,” he says happily, and proceeds to wipe his face off on Steve’s pillowcase.</p><p>The timer goes off, saving Bucky from repercussions, and Steve gives him one last sweet and tender kiss and goes back downstairs.</p><p>He’s stirring powdered sugar and orange zest into some milk to make icing when Bucky comes into the kitchen. His cup of coffee is already on the counter, and he takes it and leans on the sink, his back to the window. The sun shining through gives him a bright halo, each sprung curl on his head highlighted in creamy gold like a byzantine icon.</p><p>“Do you want to eat breakfast first or open presents first?” Steve asks him.</p><p>“I don’t see why we can’t do both, we have a coffee table for a reason.”</p><p>So that’s what they do. Steve pours the icing over top of the cinnamon rolls in the pan, and Bucky gets forks and plates and a spatula and refills both of their cups of coffee. They sit down in front of the tree and Steve pushes Bucky’s pile of presents over. “You first,” he says.</p><p>Bucky opens the Bluetooth speakers and the books and, with a delighted laugh, the things from Little My. Then grinning like a Cheshire cat, he insists that it’s Steve’s turn to open some of his presents. There’s an anthology of Grimm’s fairy tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham and another big Lego set, this one a treehouse. Steve bursts out laughing, his face aching from holding such a big smile for so long. “I can’t believe we bought each other the same toys. At this rate, we’re gonna be the number one customers at Little My.”</p><p>“Wait a second,” Bucky says with a strange, faraway look on his face. There’s a pause, and then he licks his lips. “We could have been buying each other <em>toys</em>. Why didn’t we think of that?” It takes Steve a minute to figure out what he’s talking about, and then he says “Oh. <em>Oh</em>.” The grin Bucky gives him is scandalously lewd and Steve, even after all these months, feels his face catch on fire.</p><p>“Fuck. Stop it. We still have presents to open,” he says, and Bucky laughs at him, open and bright, but with a wicked promise hidden inside.</p><p>When Bucky opens the scarf and the sweater, he tries to pull the sweater on immediately before Steve stops him, making him take his hoodie off first. When he finally gets it pulled all the way down over his head, his hair crackling with dry electricity and standing out from around his head like eiderdown, Steve melts into a puddle in his lap, staring helplessly at the way the green brings out the blue in his eyes, the copper in his hair, the pink on his cheeks. He takes hold of the cowl neck and smooths it down, then wraps the filmy scarf around Bucky’s neck and uses it to tug Bucky toward him. He rubs his nose back and forth across Bucky’s prickly cheek. “You look good in every color,” he murmurs. “But green and blue make you look especially beautiful.”</p><p>Bucky closes his eyes for a moment in a sudden attack of shyness. “You did good,” he says,  and then, squeezing Steve’s knee, “Okay, you have to open the big box, now.”</p><p>He looks a little nervous, and even if he’d been trying to keep a blank face, his metal arm would have betrayed him. It zings, once, twice in quick succession, as if annoyed, but Steve knows what it means. He slaps the top of the box and says, “I don’t know what this is, but I’m sure I’ll love it.”</p><p>“I know you’ll love it,” Bucky says, “but I’m not sure how much you’re going to love what it entails.”</p><p>There’s no point in trying to draw him out, so Steve just stands up and pulls the bow off the top of the box and pulls open the flaps. Inside there’s a big black… thing. Another box? Steve reaches in and touches it with a careful hand. It’s cold; it’s made of iron. All of sudden, he realizes what it is.</p><p>“Did you buy me a woodstove?” he says, his heart full of incredulous laughter, and spins around.</p><p>Bucky, in the meantime, has pushed himself to his feet and is rocking lightly back and forth on his toes, wringing his hands, his hair still standing out from his head in great, staticky wisps. “I got someone to come in and look at the fireplace while you were out last week”—he jerks his thumb over his shoulder toward the blank white wall—“and they said there wouldn’t be any problem refinishing it. It was someone Clint recommended because they did work in his Bed-Stuy building, and they said they could get started the week after New Years”— Steve opens his mouth but can’t find the space to get a word in edgewise—"and it wouldn’t take more than a couple of days and I decided on a woodstove because it’s more practical and you like more practical things and I knew that you weren’t going to do it for yourself even if you really wanted it, and even if it involves construction on the house, I hope you like it?” He trails off at the end, his voice rising to a hopeful squeak, and Steve wades through the sea of wrapping paper on the floor to grab Bucky’s face between his hands and kiss the goddamn cotton-candy stuffing out of him.</p><p>“You magnificent bastard,” Steve says, when Bucky finally pushes him away with a gasp. “Of course I love it. It’s, it’s so, I just,” he can’t get the words out, he doesn’t even really know what he feels besides utterly delighted and in love and knocked a little cockeyed by the thoughtfulness of Bucky and the grandness of the gesture. So in lieu of any more stumbling declarations of approval, he just kisses Bucky again, and again and again and again.</p><p>Finally, Bucky’s mouth looks like he’s gone a couple rounds in the ring and Steve can feel that his own chin is damp and there’s a flood of torn paper lapping at their ankles and his stomach is begging for more cinnamon rolls. “I love it,” he says one last time, just to make sure that Bucky knows. And then, because he can’t help himself—he <em>is</em> Steven Grant Rogers, after all—“I can’t believe you won Christmas, you jerk,” and Bucky laughs so hard that Steve has to kick him a little in the ankle and then shut his eyes against the dazzling glow of white-hot happiness as Bucky tackles him into the armchair, which screeches across the floor and hits the wall, right where their new woodstove is going to be.</p>
<hr/><p>The next week passes with a hop, a skip, and a jump, and all of a sudden, it’s New Year’s Eve. They go out for a run together in the morning and then shower and fall back into bed, as is their wont. “Will you fuck me?” Steve asks, arms tight around Bucky’s back, both of them shivering under the duvet with wet hair, pressed together naked from head to toe and trying to generate some body heat. “I need to get out of my head for a little bit.”</p><p>Bucky starts to stroke his hands up and down Steve’s sides. “Nervous?” he asks softly.</p><p>“Yeah, a little.” Steve hunches, drawing his cold feet up Bucky’s calves and tucking his head under his chin. “Don’t know why. We’re married already. Feels like we’ve been together for years and years. We didn’t actually tell anyone we were doing this, but it won’t come as a surprise, so I don’t know why I feel a little nervous.”</p><p>“Well, it’s one thing for all your friends to know how you feel about me, but it’s different to have to get up in front of them and say it.”</p><p>“Yeah, I guess so.” Bucky moves his hands around to Steve’s lower back, pressing a little harder with his fingertips, pushing all the tension down the long muscles of his back to his hips, where it fizzles into nothingness. Steve can feel himself relaxing by degrees, but it’s not enough. “Aren’t you nervous?” he asks.</p><p>“No, not really. And I don’t know why not, either. Maybe I should be, but all I feel right now is impatience. I just want you to be my husband already. For real.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Steve presses his lips to the divot where Bucky’s throat runs down into his collarbones, but he doesn’t turn it into a kiss; he just wants to feel the pulse of his heart, hot and strong and alive as it thrums steadily under his mouth.</p><p>After another few minutes, Bucky says, “So, you want to get out of your head.”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, I do.”</p><p>“Okay. I have an idea. Close your eyes and keep them closed.” He feels Bucky slip away, out from under the covers, careful not to let out the warmth they’ve built up underneath. He goes into the closet and opens a drawer, and then across the floor to the radiator. Steve can hear him fiddle with the controls, and then the bed dips again as he slips back under the duvet.</p><p>“You need to get out of your head, Steve, and I want to help you. So I’m gonna do something, but you gotta tell me if it’s okay. Okay?”</p><p>“Okay,” Steve says. There’s a little flutter of nerves in his stomach, but it’s excitement, not anxiety. Bucky leans over him for a second, blocking out the morning light that’s shining softly through the curtains, and then Steve feels the whisper of silk against his face, cool and slick. He sucks in a sharp breath but relaxes immediately. “Okay?” Bucky murmurs.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says. “I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”</p><p>“Roll over on your side.”</p><p>He feels Bucky’s palm smooth the fabric down over his temple and then gather the two ends behind his head, knotting them tightly enough so that it won’t slip down. “This isn’t my good tie, is it?” Steve asks, just a little waver in his voice. “The one I’m going to wear today?”</p><p>Bucky scoffs softly. “What do you take me for? No, this is one of your worst ones. I was going to throw it away anyway when you weren’t looking.”</p><p>He gently pushes on Steve’s shoulder so that he rolls onto his back again. “It’s not the best blindfold, but it’ll have to do for right now,” he says.</p><p>Steve can sense a little light leaking in around the edges, but that’s all. The darkness is soft and warm and comforting. He feels like he could almost slip back into sleep again, but Bucky pulls the duvet down to the end of the bed and then takes hold of Steve’s calves just under his knees, pushing them up and apart so that they make space for him to settle between them. Then he leans over, one hand on either side of Steve’s shoulders, and brushes the lightest of kisses over his open, ready mouth. It feels like a breeze on the last day of May, airy and cool, but with the promise of the hot summer that’s right on its heels.</p><p>“Bucky,” he whispers.</p><p>Bucky sits back on his heels and drags his hands down Steve’s chest, pausing for a second to circle his nipples with his thumbs. Steve gasps softly and arches his chest into the touch, but Bucky just strokes further down, until he reaches the hourglass of his waist. He tightens his grip and pulls Steve down the bed and up onto the slopes of his powerful thighs so that only Steve’s upper back is on the bed now, hips thrust up and the muscles in his abdomen pulled taut, making a bridge out of his quivering body.</p><p>He feels terribly, wonderfully exposed, and he imagines what he looks like, sees himself in his mind’s eye, his legs akimbo and his cock jutting out. “Bucky,” he whispers again, and moves his hands from where they’re fisted in the sheets to grab at Bucky’s knees, the only part of him that he can reach.</p><p>Bucky is rubbing circles on the thin skin on the inside of Steve’s hip bones, but he says, “Wait a second,” and slides his legs out from where they’re folded under Steve’s ass and off the bed again. Steve lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding, and without the furnace of Bucky’s body near at hand, his skin pebbles immediately in the cold air of the bedroom.</p><p>Bucky is back again, a second later, and he resumes his position on the bed, knees bent, Steve’s ass pulled up into his lap. “Give me your hands, baby,” he says, and when Steve feels the cool graze of another silk tie over the delicate skin of his wrists, he shivers all over, involuntarily, his body a whole grove of quaking aspens.</p><p>“Okay?” Bucky murmurs, and when Steve says “Yeah, yes,” on a breathy sigh, Bucky pushes his bound wrists up above his head and says, “Don’t move your hands until I say so.”</p><p>All of a sudden, Steve feels sweat stand out all over his body, like he’s in a dry sauna, like he’s being roasted over an open flame. He feels hot and flushed, like the air above his chest would be shimmering with heat, if only he could see it. But he can’t; his eyes are pressed closed by a thin strip of cool silk, his lashes grazing against it as he tries to blink, involuntarily.</p><p>He’s never thought about this before, never thought about being blindfolded and tied up and at the mercy of another person. It’s a polite fiction, of course; he’s hardly more vulnerable naked and tied up with two bits of silk than he is in jeans and a t-shirt. But it’s a thought that overwhelms him anyway, the idea that Bucky’s got him right where he wants him and Steve can’t do anything about it. <em>It’s the loss of control that turns you on</em>, a little voice says in his head, and it gets mixed up with his own voice saying, <em>to need to cede a little control</em> to Bucky and Bucky saying, <em>why don’t you let me take care of you, Steve</em>, and he shakes his head roughly, trying to focus the tumult of his thoughts back onto the feeling of Bucky’s hands, one on each hip.</p><p>“Steve, you okay?” Bucky asks, sounding a little worried.</p><p>The words come tumbling out of him, stepping on each other’s heels. “Yeah, I’m fine, just a little overwhelmed, but in a good way, it’s okay, please touch me.”</p><p>Bucky laughs, deep and rumbly in his chest like a lion purring, and then finally, finally, takes Steve’s aching cock in his human hand. It’s cold and sticky—there’s lube on it, but Steve didn’t even notice that Bucky had gotten the lube out. He gives Steve’s cock a few absent-minded strokes, ignoring the way that Steve gasps and jerks, while he says, “First thing I’m gonna do is jerk you off nice and slow so that you feel… every… excruciating… stroke.” He punctuates each word with a long, slow slide, his fist loose, barely enough friction between his lax grip and the warming lube to make Steve feel anything more than a hot impatience.</p><p>“And then,” he says, relaxed, like he has all the time in the world, “after you come, I’m gonna suck you off while I open you up, and because you’re all tied up and helpless and vulnerable, you’re gonna have no choice but to submit to the pleasure of my mouth”—and then he bursts into a little string of giggles high in the back of his nose.</p><p>Steve’s ears are filled with a white static, but he manages to get it together enough to say, “Wha… what’s so funny.”</p><p>Bucky clears his throat. “Sorry, I didn’t have a script for this and I don’t exactly know what I’m doing, it sounds kind of ridiculous.”</p><p>“<em>No</em>,” Steve gasps hoarsely, “No, it doesn’t, tell me again, please.” Bucky’s hand stills in its rhythm for half a second, and Steve bucks up into his fist, arching his back so far it’s almost painful, trying to keep the thread of steadily mounting pleasure from diminishing in any way.</p><p>“Tell you what?” Bucky asks, but he starts moving his fist again on Steve’s cock, and Steve lets out the breath he was holding in one soft explosion, followed by a moan.</p><p>“Tell me… tell me how you’re gonna make me submit to the pleasure of your mouth.”</p><p>“Oh,” Bucky breathes out, and his hand speeds up slightly. “I see. Okay. I’m going to make you submit to the pleasure of my mouth, I’m going to suck you off just the way you like it—"</p><p>“Your tongue, god,” Steve gasps, barely aware that he’s saying anything at all. He can feel his orgasm building, the heat collecting in the cradle of his pelvis, but in this position it’s impossible to chase it; he really is at Bucky’s mercy. He curls his toes until the joints crack.</p><p> Bucky clucks his tongue reprovingly. “You don’t have to tell me the way you like it. I already know. Do I need to gag you, too?”</p><p>Steve moans like he’s dying, he feels subsumed in an ocean of pleasure, the sensation of touch redoubled because his eyes are out of commission. He doesn’t know if he wants it, he can barely think, much less string words together to negotiate anything, but Bucky goes on, “And then after I get you off again, I’m gonna turn you over on your belly and fuck you so slow you won’t remember your own name when I’m done with you. And you’re not gonna touch me, or yourself. You’re not gonna do anything but lie there with your eyes closed and your hands tied.”</p><p>“Okay,” Steve starts to say, but on the next stroke, Bucky swipes his palm over the head of Steve’s cock and then squeezes him tight, his hand hot and slick, and Steve only gets out a choked “Ohhh,” before his orgasm hits him, blinding and inescapable like a freight train in a dark tunnel, and he comes all over his own chest.</p><p>“Mm, that was quick,” Bucky rumbles approvingly, while Steve is gasping and twitching.</p><p>“It’s just,” Steve says after a moment, trying to catch enough breath to push a word or two out of his mouth, “this is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”</p><p>Bucky laughs quietly and slips off the bed. Steve’s legs fall open, heavy and boneless, and a minute later Bucky comes back with a towel from the bathroom and gently wipes Steve’s chest and the hollow of his stomach where a little come has pooled.</p><p>“Still okay?” he asks.</p><p>“Mmm, yeah,” Steve murmurs, slurring his words a little. “It’s just, I didn’t know I was going to like it so much. Like this.”</p><p>Bucky laughs a little, a warm, sunny sound that fills Steve’s melted body with a sort of gooey happiness. He feels Bucky’s metal hand, now blood-hot, touch his hip. “Lift your butt up a second,” he says, and shoves a pillow under his hips so that they’re canted into the air again, like they were in Bucky’s lap two minutes ago. But this time Bucky presses one leg up against his chest and says, “Do you think you can keep that there for a while without using your hands?” and as soon as Steve nods, he simultaneously sucks the head of Steve’s cock, now only half-hard, into his mouth, and presses the tip of one slick, metal finger into him. Steve jerks automatically, his hipbone crashing into Bucky’s cheek. “Sorry, sorry,” he pants, but Bucky just laughs and lays his human arm across Steve’s hip, his hand clutching the back of Steve’s upraised thigh, keeping everything steady and still. “Tell me when you’re close,” he says, and then he proceeds to send Steve to some kind of exquisite purgatory that he never wants to leave.</p><p>After Steve has come again down Bucky’s throat and is loose and sloppy with lube, Bucky smooths his clean human hand down Steve’s heaving stomach and says, “Roll over.”</p><p>He’s not very graceful, not without being able to use his hands, but he manages to summon up the energy to flop over on his belly. Bucky maneuvers him into position with his ass up, the  pillow under his hips again. He’s floating a little, lost in the warm, dark void behind the blindfold and the cascading sensation of Bucky’s hands running up and down the long, tired muscles of his back. He imagines, idly, the way he looks, with his hands tied together and thrust out in front of him on the bed. He thinks, incongruously, about <em>Les raboteurs de parquet</em>, a painting that had made him feel exciting, illicit things when he had seen it in a big book of art as a teenager.</p><p>But that line of thinking abruptly gets cut off when he feels the head of Bucky’s cock press against his hole, and Bucky says, “Still okay?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve breathes out on a sigh, and then stays like that, mouth fallen open, his lungs devoid of air and the blood pounding loud in his ears, as Bucky pushes into him, easy and slow and with barely a pinch of discomfort. When he’s as far in as he can go, but before he starts thrusting, he leans over Steve, pressing him down into the mattress with the weight of his body, hot as the surface of the sun and heavy as a slab of granite. Steve would happily die right here, and Bucky could be his tombstone, stamped with his dates of birth and death and “Here lies Steven Grant Rogers, fucked into the afterlife by his beloved.”</p><p>Some time later, Steve wakes up to Bucky sitting on the edge of the bed, running his hands through Steve’s hair from his temple to his nape. “Wake up, sweetheart, it’s time for lunch.”</p><p>Steve blinks at him, blinks at him again. Looks down at his hands tucked between his naked thighs. He’s curled up on top of the duvet, half-covered by a blanket that’s mostly fallen off. “Did I fall asleep?” he asks.</p><p>“Of course,” Bucky says, his grin cocky and bright. Steve loves him so much.</p><p>“I love you so much,” he says. “I meant, did I fall asleep while...” But then he remembers, blindfolded and loosely bound, babbling half-formed nonsense into the bedsheets while Bucky took him apart from behind. “Oh, no.”</p><p>“No, sweetheart, you were definitely awake. But after you came the third time, you fell straight asleep and you’ve been napping ever since. It’s half past twelve, though, and we need to eat lunch so that we can get to the Tower in time for everything.”</p><p>Steve sits up, wincing a little at the burn in his thighs and the sting in the tenderest parts of his undercarriage. “Oh, yeah, that’s still today, isn’t it? I feel like I’ve slept for a whole week.”</p><p>He stretches his arms above his head and Bucky laughs, taking the opportunity to poke him in the armpit, bounding off the bed and halfway out the door as Steve yelps. “That’s right, it’s our wedding day. Now get a move on.”</p>
<hr/><p>Natasha had told them that everything would be ready for the ceremony at five, so they should arrive at the Tower fifteen minutes early to give themselves some time for explaining. They’re punctual, as usual, and when the doors of the elevator slide open and let them out into the common room, the air is flooded by a cacophony of shrieks, mostly from Tony, wearing a black crushed-velvet blazer with gold lapels.</p><p>“You ASSHOLES!” he shouts, speed walking across the floor, looking progressively angrier the closer he gets. He stops right in front of them, draws himself up, all five-foot-seven of him, and shakes his finger in their faces. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were getting married! In my house! At my party! Not even a peep!”</p><p>His voice goes up to a squeak on the end of ‘peep’ and Steve can’t help himself, he grabs Tony by his absurd lapels and pulls him into a crushing hug. He struggles a little bit before Steve takes pity and lets him go. “You’re a great friend, Tony,” he says, and Tony splutters for a moment and says, brushing his jacket off, “Yes. Well. You’re still an asshole.”</p><p>By then, all the other Avengers, including Sam and Maria, have gathered around to express their varying degrees of excitement, joy, surprise, and smug lack of surprise. Samara pops up on Steve’s right and elbows him in the side. “Finally gonna make an honest man out of him?” she says, waggling her eyebrows salaciously.</p><p>Steve rolls his eyes. “Where’s the flower girl?” he asks, and Samara points over Bruce’s head to where Jens is holding her, standing with Daniel a little off to the side. “They’re being kind of shy, but…” she starts, but then Clint walks past and hands Freja a noisemaker, and Samara mutters, “Oh shit,” and disappears.</p><p>“Steve,” Natasha finally says, after everyone has disappeared through the big glass doors, “are you ready?” They start to walk out to the terrace hand-in-hand, but Natasha puts a hand on Bucky’s chest and says, “You’re the bride. Stay here with Samara.”</p><p>Steve gives him a smile and blows him a kiss, and Natasha walks him arm and arm out onto the terrace that wraps around three sides of the building. When they round the corner and he sees what Natasha and Clint have put together, his breath sticks in his throat.</p><p>All of the outdoor furniture and the patio heaters that usually crowd this section of the terrace have been pushed back against the walls, and right in the center of the open space sits a glass greenhouse. The day has been clear, only a few wisps of high cirrus clouds like a pale wash over the brilliant blue of the winter sky, but now the sun is setting over New Jersey, the bottom rim just touching the horizon, blanketing the city and as far as the eye can see beyond it in a warm, coppery gold. It catches the glass panes and the greenhouse sparkles like a back-lit diamond in a jeweler’s loupe.</p><p>The doors are open, and the guests are starting to file inside. Steve follows behind them, leaning a little on Natasha for support, but she holds up well under the strain and doesn’t complain. At the open door he pauses for a moment and looks around. The inside of the structure is small, just big enough for all the guests, most of them sitting down now in a double rows of white chairs with a narrow aisle between them. There are patio heaters in each corner, keeping the inside of the greenhouse hot and humid like a winter conservatory.</p><p>All of the space that’s left is taken up by flowers, flowers everywhere. There are trailing flowers in baskets hanging from the struts between the transparent panes bedewed with condensation. There are flowers on the floor, in buckets and vases and terracotta pots and, Steve notices distantly, one elephant’s-foot umbrella stand. Each guest has a bouquet in hand, and at the end of the short aisle, Clint is standing there looking strangely at home in a bright purple suit, surrounded by a riot of pink and blue and neon yellow and more shades of green than Steve would know what to do with if he had them on a palette.</p><p>“You like it?” Natasha asks, and Steve finds to his surprise that he’s barely holding it together. He has to turn his back to the greenhouse and look out over Manhattan, pinching the bridge of his nose and breathing deep, in, out. Natasha murmurs in his ear, “I’ve got two dozen handkerchiefs up my sleeves, you just let me know when you need one.” After another minute of blinking, his eyes are clear enough of the stinging tears, and he sniffs loudly and says, “Thank you.” He means far, far more than “thank you for the offer of handkerchiefs,” but he knows that she knows that.</p><p>“Okay,” he says with a smile when she squeezes his arm, turning back around. “I’m ready.”</p><p>Natasha leads him into the greenhouse and down the aisle, and positions him to one side of Clint. Then she sends a quick text and says, “Alright, he’s on his way.”</p><p>“Where’s the music?” Tony says from the front row, affronted that this wedding is not wedding-y enough.</p><p>Beside Steve, Clint rolls his eyes. “You want music? You make the music yourself.”</p><p>“Sure,” Tony says, blasé, and starts to hum the opening bars of the wedding march. “Dun dun dun dunnnn...”</p><p>“Not yet!” Pepper cuts him off with a hiss. “Wait until he’s at the chapel doors, at least.”</p><p>Just then, Steve catches sight of Bucky rounding the corner of the building. He’s visibly leaning on Samara, but he’s got Freja sitting in the crook of his other arm. She’s bouncing up and down and craning to look around, and when she catches sight of the greenhouse full of flowers and light and people, she points and starts to babble. Bucky stops short, his mouth drops open, and then Steve can see, glistening in the light of the setting sun, one fat tear roll down his cheek. Samara pulls a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her own dress and hands it over, simultaneously sweeping Freja out of his arms while Bucky wipes his eyes and his nose and shoves the handkerchief into his own pocket. Then he straightens up and smooths his human hand down the front of his suit jacket. He looks through the greenhouse door and meets Steve’s eye, and Steve can’t help the brilliant, face-splitting grin that breaks out over his face like the last sliver of the sun that’s just going down over the horizon.</p><p>“Okay!” Sam says, clapping his hands. “Look at Steve’s face, he must be here. Everybody start singing.” Then the whole group discordantly starts <em>dun dun dunnnn</em>ing for a bar or two before they all coalesce into a surprisingly harmonious a capella wedding march. Steve can hear Pepper and Maria on the high end and Thor low enough to rumble the panes of glass, and then Freja is toddling down the aisle with a handful of daisies and crashing into his legs, and then Bucky is there, in the doorway, eyes fixed on Steve’s face and an expression that makes Steve burst into tears again.</p><p>Natasha hands him another handkerchief and murmurs in his ear, “Pull it together, just a little longer,” squeezing his elbow hard, and then Bucky is standing right in front of him, brighter than the sun and far, far more beautiful.</p><p>“Dearly beloved,” Clint says, and the murmuring and occasional strains of the wedding march that Steve hadn’t even realized were still there die out, replaced by an expectant silence. “We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.” Someone barks out a laugh in the silence, maybe it’s Bruce, Steve’s not sure. He can’t take his eyes off of Bucky.</p><p>Clint clears his throat. “Sorry. We are gathered here today to celebrate this thing called life, at this surprise wedding that me and Nat threw together at the last minute because these two bozos here didn’t tell us they wanted to get married until, like, three weeks ago.”</p><p>Bucky’s rolling his eyes, and Steve says, “Well, actually,” but Clint cuts him off. “I’m telling the story here. You shut up and make goo-goo eyes at your husband.”</p><p>“Not his husband yet,” someone calls out in the audience, and Clint holds one expository finger up in the air. “Ah, now we come to the juicy part. As part of Barnes’s new identity, Fury over there”—out of the corner of his eye, Steve sees someone raise their hand in the audience and manages to tear his eyes away from Bucky’s face long enough to look over and see Fury sitting in the back row. He must have slipped in at the last moment, and he’s got smug self-satisfaction written all over his face—“Fury waved his magic wand and got them a marriage certificate, backdated three years. That’s right,” he says, over the murmurs of the audience, “Our boys have been married for three years already. But they hadn’t actually celebrated it yet, ‘cause even they didn’t know about it, so that’s why we’re here right now. Because they wanted to share this moment with us, because we’re family.”</p><p>Steve looks around the audience again, and sees all the faces of the people he loves. Sam is shaking with suppressed laughter, Samara is grinning from ear to ear, and Tony… Tony’s eyes are shining in the low twilight and he gives Steve a watery smile, as sarcastic as he can possibly make it, when their eyes meet.</p><p>“So, like I said, three weeks ago, they asked me and Nat to throw a little something together, with two stipulations. First, that whatever we did was going to be small and simple, only the Avengers and hangers-on. And second, that there would be flowers.” He turns to Bucky, who glances at him while trying to keep one eye on Steve at the same time. “Is this enough flowers?”</p><p>Bucky throws his head back and laughs, a great bark of laughter that rings out in the small space and compels everyone else to join him. When he finally quiets down, his eyes are red again, and there are new tear-tracks on his face. Samara hands him another handkerchief.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s enough,” he finally manages to choke out.</p><p>“Okay. So, I’m gonna keep this short and sweet because you’re all here to party, not to listen to me yammer about true love.  If anyone has any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, well, I don’t care, you’re three years too late. Take it up with Fury.”</p><p>Everyone laughs again before Clint puts a finger to his lips and says, exaggeratedly, “Shhhhhhhh. Okay, here’s the good part. Steve, you first.”</p><p>Steve clears his throat and sniffs loudly. His vision blurs again, and he has to take the next handkerchief—which he finds thrust into his hand by Natasha—and wipe his eyes before he can work up enough breath to continue. Thank god for his eidetic memory and the slip of paper he’d glanced over at lunch this afternoon. “I, Steve, take you, Bucky, to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”</p><p>Bucky has got his bottom lip pulled between his teeth so tight that all the color has leached out of it, and when he lets it go to suck in a deep, shaky breath, Steve watches how it blushes blood-red, the indentions of his teeth impressed in its pillowy softness.</p><p>“I, Bucky,” he says, his voice surprisingly steady, “take you, Steve, to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”</p><p>“I think we can all agree,” Clint says, his own voice surprisingly rough, not that Steve notices, “that death has already parted them once, and will have a tough job of it if he wants to part them again. Now with that said, I pronounce you husband and husband. You may kiss the groom.”</p><p>Steve falls forward and catches Bucky’s face in both his hands, slotting their mouths together as Bucky’s arms come up behind his back, grasping at the back of his suit jacket until Steve feels the seam start to give. Bucky opens his mouth and tips his head to the side, and Steve deepens the kiss as someone in the audience wolf-whistles, loud and piercing in the small space. The only thing he cares about is the hot, slick taste of the inside of Bucky’s mouth, sweeter than a whole field of sugarcane, and his soft, warm body pressed up against him. Finally, Natasha pulls them apart by shoving her hands in between them like a wedge, giggling all the while.</p><p>Then Steve realizes that everyone is on their feet, cheering and shouting and laughing. Someone in the cacophony is howling like a wolf, and Steve’s insides feel the way he knows his face looks, hot and red and glowing like the heart of a bonfire. The sound rolls over him like a wave, the hanging flowers in their wire baskets shivering as the little greenhouse shakes. He kisses Bucky again, amidst the general uproar, and eventually, someone moves toward the door, and they all spill out onto the terrace.</p><p>The sky is dark, now, just a stripe of red and orange and pink and blue in the west like all the leftover paint on the day’s palette spread in a single brush-stroke over the horizon. They stand hand in hand and look out over the view until Natasha pops up between them and links both of their arms through hers. “How was that, was it what you wanted?”</p><p>Steve is still, embarrassingly, crying a little, so Bucky says, “Yeah, it was perfect. I wouldn’t have changed anything. Thank you, Nat.” She leans her head briefly against his shoulder and he says, “What now?”</p><p>She uses her weight like a fulcrum to spin them both around to face the terrace, where the furniture and the heaters have been pushed back into the middle of the floor and a waiter in black is weaving through the crowd with a tray of drinks.</p><p>“Now?” she says. “Now we party.”  </p>
<hr/><p>It’s almost midnight when Bucky comes over to where Steve is standing with Sam by the pool table, watching Pepper take turns whipping all comers without even looking like she’s trying. Steve is handing Sam a twenty-dollar bill as Clint slinks away, head hanging low and hands stuffed in his pockets. Bucky slips his arm through Steve’s and says, “Gambling away all our hard-earned money, sweetheart?”</p><p>Steve huffs, annoyed, and says, “Clint’s an archer! A sniper! How could he lose at pool to a business lady?”</p><p>Sam just pats him on the arm, looking smug, and says, “I’m going up to the bar for a refill, see you two lovebirds in ten minutes for the fireworks.”</p><p>Steve looks at Bucky and Bucky says, “Yeah, that’s what I came over here for. What do you want to do about the fireworks?”</p><p>Steve looks around the common area. Clint, Bruce, and Maria are scattered around the couches engaged in some sort of high-stakes video game, Natasha, Samara, and Jens are playing cards at the big dining table, Freja is conked out in a beanbag chair that’s been pulled into the dining room, and in the open-plan kitchen, Thor and Tony are holding court and mixing drinks. He doesn’t want to leave at all.</p><p>But it’s been an exceedingly long day, and he’s starting to feel the effects of being strung tight like a garrote for the last eight hours. He can feel the pleasant wear and tear of laughing and talking and mingling down to the soles of his shoes.</p><p>“Let’s say goodbye to everyone and go down to the apartment, okay?” he asks, leaning into Bucky’s side and brushing the tip of his nose through his glossy, orange-blossom curls.</p><p>Bucky looks around the common area and says, “How about let’s not. If we start saying goodbye now, we’ll still be here when the sun comes up. Let’s just slip out and I’ll send a message to Nat so that nobody worries about where we are.”</p><p>Steve still looks a little doubtful, so Bucky says, “We’ve already thanked them all for coming to our wedding, and they’ll still be here later if we want to come back up. Come on, we’ll watch the fireworks from your beautifully soundproofed living room windows, bless Tony’s soul.”</p><p>“<em>Our</em> beautifully soundproofed living room windows,” Steve says, mock-petulantly, but Bucky just smiles and takes him by the elbow and leads him to the elevator.</p><p>When they get in the apartment, Steve goes to turn on the lights, but Bucky grabs his hand and pulls him over to the floor-to-ceiling living room window, right as the first fireworks go off over the Hudson River. They have a beautiful view out over Manhattan to the river, no other buildings in the way, and the fireworks are far enough away that they look like flowers—chrysanthemums and asters, roses and clematis, fast-forwarded in time so that they rise from the earth on a sparkling stalk, bloom, and die again in the span of a few seconds. They fizzle out over the water to make way for the next season’s flowers to rise, bloom, and die in turn.</p><p>The sound of the explosions is a muffled thump in Steve’s chest, only barely distinguishable from his own heartbeat, and he wraps his arms around Bucky from behind, swaying back and forth to music that neither of them can hear, both of their heartbeats and the pulse of the fireworks mingling to make a discordant but pleasant rumble in his chest.</p><p>When the grand finale is over and the smoke has drifted further out to sea and the normal, almost-imperceptible clamor of the city has returned, Bucky turns around in his arms and grasps the back of Steve’s neck with both hands. “How about you help me get out of these clothes?” he says. And then, coyly, “Husband.”</p><p>“What,” Steve says, moving his hands from the small of Bucky’s back to his hips and pulling him close, “you didn’t have enough this morning?” And then he adds, bending down just a little to brush a soft kiss over Bucky’s half-open mouth, “Husband.”</p><p>Bucky drops his hands to Steve’s arms and lays his head on his shoulder. His hot body in the circle of Steve’s arms feels like a cornucopia of every good thing that exists in the world, like holding tight onto the embodiment of the very idea of home.</p><p>“How could I ever have enough?” he says into the crook of Steve’s neck, close and warm and smelling like flowers and whiskey and the cigar he’d smoked with Sam after the wedding toast. “How could I ever have enough, Steve? It’s you.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_baby_pancake">This is a Dutch baby.</a>
</p><p>  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_raboteurs_de_parquet#/media/File:Gustave_Caillebotte_-_The_Floor_Planers_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">
    <em>Les raboteurs de parquet</em>
  </a></p><hr/><p><b>Me on twitter back in January right as I was finishing the first draft:</b> What if I write a sequel about coming to terms with wanting children but being functionally immortal and Steve's inability to overcome the inevitability of future grief?</p><p><b>Me now:</b> And also they tell Fury where to stick his job offer and they buy Little My bc the owners want to retire and Bucky spends his days running the shop and building huge Lego structures for the display window while Steve starts a small press that publishes lavishly-illustrated picture books and they get a dog</p><p>So anyway, I'm not marking this series as complete, because it ain't ;)</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come talk to me on <a href="https://twitter.com/Hark_Bananas">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://harkbananas.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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